"Sibyl!" I called again. Still absolute silence. I turned round upon the waiting and anxious domestics with an assumption of calmness. "Lady Sibyl is probably not in her rooms at all;"--I said; "She may have gone out unobserved. This door of the ante-chamber has a spring-lock,--it can easily get fast shut by the merest accident. Bring a strong hammer,--or a crowbar,--anything that will break it open,--if you had had sense you would have obeyed Miss Clare, and done this a couple of hours ago." And I waited with enforced composure, while my instructions were carried out as rapidly as possible. Two of the men-servants appeared with the necessary tools, and very soon the house resounded with clamour,--blow after blow was dealt upon the solid oaken door for some time without success,--the spring lock would not yield,--neither would the strong hinges give way. Presently however, after ten minutes' hard labour, one of the finely carved panels was smashed in,--then another,--and, springing over the débris I rushed through the ante-room into the boudoir,--then paused, listening, and calling again, "Sibyl!" No one followed me,--some indefinable instinct, some nameless dread, held the servants back, and Mavis Clare as well. I was alone, ... and in complete darkness. Groping about, with my heart beating furiously, I sought for the ivory button in the wall which would, at pressure, flood the rooms with electric light, but somehow I could not find it. My hand came in contact with various familiar things which I recognised by touch,--rare bits of china, bronzes, vases, pictures,--costly trifles that were heaped up as I knew, in this particular apartment with a lavish luxury and disregard of cost befitting a wanton eastern empress of old time,--cautiously feeling my way along, I started with terror to see, as I thought, a tall figure outline itself suddenly against the darkness,--white, spectral and luminous,--a figure that, as I stared at it aghast, raised a pallid hand and pointed me forward with a menacing air of scorn! In my dazed horror at this apparition, or delusion, I stumbled over the heavy trailing folds of a velvet _portiére_, and knew by this that I had passed from the boudoir into the adjoining bedroom. Again I stopped,--calling "Sibyl!" but my voice had scarcely strength enough to raise itself above a whisper. Giddy and confused as I was, I remembered that the electric light in this room was fixed at the side of the toilet-table, and I stepped hurriedly in that direction, when all at once in the thick gloom I touched something clammy and cold like dead flesh, and brushed against a garment that exhaled faint perfume, and rustled at my touch with a silken sound. This alarmed me more thoroughly than the spectre I fancied I had just seen,--I drew back shudderingly against the wall,--and in so doing, my fingers involuntarily closed on the polished ivory stud which, like a fairy talisman in modern civilization, emits radiance at the owner's will.