“At dinner?” she asked.
“Yes, Miss,” he replied, not yet certain that he was not holding converse with a real ghost. “They are all at dinner.”
“My maid, Chayter—where is she?” demanded Helen, in the same imperious tone.
“She ’ave left, Miss,” responded Whelks, with a gulp. “She ’ave gone directly after you—some time ago, Miss.” He knew not how to express himself in his excitement.
“And Miss Evangeline’s maid?” exclaimed Helen, in a tone of inquiry.
“Oh, her, Miss; she—she are in Miss Evangeline’s room, Miss, upstairs.”
“Enough,” returned Helen, in the same cold, haughty voice, and added, sternly—“Mention not my arrival to any one. I will announce myself.”
She passed him, and proceeded direct to her sister’s room.
Within it was seated the young maid who attended Evangeline. She had taken the opportunity, while the family were at dinner, to place herself very close to the light of a lamp and read over—slowly and earnestly—a letter addressed to her by one George Jenkins, wherein he had made statements which made her eyes glitter, and her lips to pucker into a small circle. She laid her letter in her lap to revel in one enchanting sentence, when she became conscious of the presence of some one in the room standing in front of her.
With a slight scream she leaped up, and, crumpling her letter in her hand, crammed it into her pocket, and, with scarlet face and trembling limbs, saw that the eldest Miss Grahame, or her wraith, stood before her.