Betty hurried toward the back-stairs. She was leaning over the banisters and had called once for one of the maids, when she ceased abruptly, and stood still for several moments with her head tilted back and her body tense with surprise.
So long as Betty could recall, there had been a vacant room in the rear of the old Ashton homestead, which had stood for more than a hundred years at the comer of Elm Street in Woodford, New Hampshire. She was stupider than other people about remembering the events of her childhood and yet she was sure that this room had never been used for any purpose save as a storehouse for old pieces of furniture, for discarded pictures, for any odds and ends that found no other resting place about the great house. It was curious because the room was a particularly attractive one, with big windows overlooking the back garden, but then there was some story or other connected with it (old houses have old memories) and this must have made it unpopular. Betty did not know what the story was and yet she had grown up with a queer, childish dread of this room and rarely went into it unless she felt compelled.
Now, though she was not a coward, it did give her an uncanny sensation to hear a low, humming sound proceeding from this supposedly empty room.
Cautiously Betty stole toward its closed door and quietly turned the knob without making the least noise. Then she looked in.
What transformation had taken place! The room was a store place no longer, for most of the old furniture and all the other rubbish had been cleared away and what was left was arranged in a comfortable, living fashion. An old rug was spread out on the floor, a white iron bed stood in one corner with an empty bookshelf above it. There was a vase on a table holding a branch of blossoming pussy willow, and seated before one of the big, open windows was a strange girl whom Betty Ashton never remembered to have seen before in her life.
The girl was sewing, but this was not what kept Betty silent. She was also singing a new and strangely beautiful song.
"Lay me to sleep in sheltering flame, O Master of the Hidden Fire; Wash pure my heart, and cleanse for me My soul's desire."
Unconscious of the intruder and forgetful of everything else the singer's voice rose clearer and sweeter with the second verse.
"In flame of sunrise bathe my mind, O Master of the Hidden Fire, That when I wake, clear-eyed may be My soul's desire."
Then in silence, as she leaned closer to the window to get a better light on her sewing, an unexpected ray of sunshine managing at this moment to break through the clouds fell directly on her bowed head. Her hair was not auburn, like Betty's, but bright, undeniable red.