“You look like a good woman. Why do you stay in such a house as this?”
“I will tell you, though I should do better to be silent. But you won’t betray me?”
“On no account.”
“I was poor, starving, when I had an application to come here. The man who engaged me told me that it was to be a housekeeper, and I had no suspicion of the character of the house—that it was a den of—”
She stopped short, but Frank understood what she would have said.
“When I discovered the character of the house, I would have left but for two reasons. First, I had no other home; next, I had become acquainted with the secrets of the house, and they would have feared that I would reveal them. I should incur great risk. So I stayed.”
Here there was a sound below. The woman started.
“Some one has come,” she said. “I must go down I will come up as soon as I can with the rest of your supper.”
“Thank you. You need not hurry.”
Our hero was left to ponder over what he had heard. There was evidently a mystery connected with this lonely house a mystery which he very much desired to solve. But there was one chance. Through the aperture in the closet he might both see and hear something, provided any should meet there that evening.