But she was full of quick sympathy, and ever ready to feel keen interest in her surroundings. It is scarcely to be wondered at, therefore, that on the night following the day we have been describing, she went up to her own room greatly engrossed by all she had heard, anxiously eager to prove herself a friend worthy of the name to the various members of the Maryon family who had appealed to her for assistance or advice. It was a beautiful night. Before Hertha got into bed she drew back the curtains of one of the two windows--her room was a corner one--as was her custom. For she loved the early morning light, and it never disturbed her slumbers before her usual hour for waking. A flood of moonlight lay on the terrace beneath. The night was perfectly, peculiarly still, and not a leaf seemed to flutter. There was something curiously dream-like about the whole scene--for the room in which Hertha stood, and on which she threw a glance as she turned again, was, like most of those in the old house, quaint and picturesque in its very simplicity. White-panelled and wainscoted, with little wreaths of carved flowers above the lintel of the door and over the two old mirrors sunk in the walls; the bed in a sort of alcove; the ancient fireplace, surmounted by a very high and narrow carved and moulded mantel-piece, of the same dull, _matt_, white-painted wood, which was the chief characteristic of the house, the whole effect was like nothing that Miss Norreys remembered ever to have seen. "It is very un-English, very un-nineteenth-century, very unlike all the attempted reproductions of the past we have so many of," thought. Hertha. "It is so exactly what it may have been, and probably was, three or four hundred years ago. One can realise how the family life has gone on unbrokenly, with all the changing actors in it, generation after generation." And again she glanced out. For the first time it struck her that this window overlooked the lower terrace walk which Celia preferred to avoid. With a sudden increase of interest, Hertha pushed up the sash, and leaned out. Yes, that was the very place, the walk bare and open at the end near the house, growing dim and shady as it was lost to view in the shrubberies farther on. "If it were worth the trouble," thought Hertha, "I should like to put on a cloak and go right along to the end and back. I don't think I should be afraid; the moonlight is so bright, and everything is so still. No flopping branches or sighing wind to make one fanciful. Yes, I _think_ I should venture. And how proud I should be to tell them of it in the morning." But even as she gazed, a slight misgiving seized her. _Was_ the night so perfectly still, or was the wind suddenly getting up? Something _was_ moving at the far end of the walk--the "White Weeper's" walk. What? The branch of a tree probably; there were aspens down there, Hertha remembered, and a mere nothing would set _them_ quivering.