'No, Miss,' said Mary, faintly, 'not much.'
'I see it in your face. What is it?'
'Let me sit down, Miss. I'll tell you what I saw; only I'm just a bit queerish.'
Mary sat down by my bed.
'Get in, Miss; you'll take cold. Get into bed, and I'll tell you. It is not much.'
I did get into bed, and gazing on Mary's frightened face, I felt a corresponding horror.
'For mercy's sake, Mary, say what it is?'
So again assuring me 'it was not much,' she gave me in a somewhat diffuse and tangled narrative the following facts:—
On closing my door, she raised her candle above her head and surveyed the lobby, and seeing no one there she ascended the stairs swiftly. She passed along the great gallery to the left, and paused a moment at the cross gallery, and then recollected my directions clearly, and followed the passage to the right.
There are doors at each side, and she had forgotten to ask me at which Madame's was. She opened several. In one room she was frightened by a bat, which had very nearly put her candle out. She went on a little, paused, and began to lose heart in the dismal solitude, when on a sudden, a few doors farther on, she thought she heard Madame's voice.