"She has gone upstairs to her room under the roof."
"Ah! Are you sure she is upstairs? That she is not in the next room, for instance, watching me through some secret peep-hole of hers?"
The girl stared at him in silence as he pointed to the wall, and as he ran his hand over its surface.
"I saw a pair of eyes watching me just now," he went on, "from the middle of this wall. I could swear to it!"
The girl looked incredulous, and passed her hand over the wall in her turn. Then she shook her head.
"I can feel nothing," said she. "It must be your fancy. There is no room there. It is the ground-floor of an old warehouse next door which has been to let for years and years—longer than this."
He still looked doubtful, and she added, sharply:
"You can see for yourself if you like."
As she spoke, she was turning to go back into the outhouse, with a sign to him to follow her. But even as she did so, another thought must have struck her, for she shut the door and turned back again.
"No," she said, decisively, "of course you don't want to see anything so much as the outside of this gloomy old house. Don't think me ungrateful; I am not, but"—she came a little nearer to Max, so that she could whisper very close to his ear—"if Granny knew that I'd let a stranger into the place while she was away, I should never hear the last of it; and—and—when she's angry I'm afraid of her."