“Here is your bed-chamber,” said Sybil, inviting her guest to enter a large and richly furnished room; “and beyond this, and connected with it, is another and a smaller apartment, which is properly the dressing-room, but which I have had fitted up as a nursery for your child and his nurse.”
“Many thanks,” replied Rosa Blondelle, as she followed her hostess into the room, and glanced around with the natural curiosity we all feel in entering a strange place.
The room was very spacious, and had many doors and windows. Its furniture was all green, which would have seemed rather gloomy, but for the bright wood fire on the hearth, that lighted up all the scene with cheerfulness.
Sybil drew an easy-chair to the chimney corner, and invited her guest to sit down.
But Rosa was too curious about her surroundings to yield herself immediately to rest.
“What an interesting old place!” she said, walking about the chamber and examining every thing.
Meanwhile the nurse-maid, more practical than her mistress, had found the door of the adjoining nursery and passed into it to put her infant charge to bed.
“Oh!” exclaimed Rosa, who had drawn aside one of the green moreen window curtains and was looking out—“Oh! what a wild, beautiful place! But these windows open right upon the grounds, and there are no outside shutters! Is there no danger?”
“No danger whatever, my dear Mrs. Blondelle. These windows open at the back of the house, upon the grounds, which run quite back to the foot of the mountain. These grounds are very private, being quite inaccessible, except through the front grounds of the house,” said Sybil, soothingly.
“But oh!” whispered Mrs. Blondelle, nowise tranquilized by the answer of her hostess—“Oh! what are those white things that I see standing among the bushes at the foot of the mountain? They look like—tombstones!” she added, with a shudder.