"Come with me, both of you," she said, taking the candle into her hand, and leading the way up the great oaken staircase.
Clinging to each other, the servants followed. This, the north wing, was the oldest part of the house. Here and there a stair creaked beneath their footsteps; at every corner there were fantastic shadows, that seemed to lie in wait and then spring suddenly out. The squeaking of a mouse and the pattering of light feet behind the wainscot made the girls start and tremble; but Ella held lightly on her way till the corridor that ran along the whole length of the upper floor of the wing was reached. Into this corridor some dozen rooms opened. Here Ella halted for a moment, and held the candle aloft.
"You shall see for yourselves that it could not be any of these doors you heard. We will examine them one by one."
One after another, the doors were tried by Miss Winter. Each door was found to be locked, its key on the outside. When she reached Number Nine, she drew in her breath, and paused for a moment before turning the handle: perhaps she did not like that room more than the girls did. It was the room they had called "her room." But Number Nine was locked as the others were locked, and Ella passed on.
When all the doors had been tried, Ella turned to the servants.
"You see now that you must have been mistaken," she said, speaking very gravely; but in their own minds neither Martha nor Ann would have admitted anything of the kind.
Ella saw that they were not satisfied. Leading the way back to Number Nine, she turned the key, opened the door, and went in. The two girls ventured no farther than the threshold. The room contained the ordinary adjuncts of a bed-chamber, and of one apparently in use. Across a chair hung a servant's muslin apron, on the chest of drawers lay a servant's cap, a linen collar, and a lavender neck-ribbon. Simple articles all, yet the two housemaids shuddered when their eyes fell on them. In a little vase on the chimney-piece were a few withered flowers--violets and snowdrops. The oval looking-glass on the dressing-table was festooned with muslin, tied with bows of pink ribbon. But Ella, as she held the candle aloft and gazed round the room, saw something to-night that she had never noticed before. The bows of ribbon had been untied, and the muslin drawn across the face of the glass so as completely to cover it.
Ella had been in the room some weeks ago, and she felt sure that the looking-glass was not covered then, It must have been done since; but by whom, and why? That none of the servants would enter the room of their own accord she knew quite well: yet whose fingers, save those of a servant, could have done it? Despite her resolution to be calm, her heart chilled as she asked herself these questions, and her eyes wandered involuntarily to the bed, as though half expecting to see there the dread outlines of a form that was still for ever. The same idea struck the two girls.
"Look at that glass!" cried the one to the other, in a half-whisper. "It is covered up as if there had been a death in the room."
Ella could bear no more. Motioning the servants from the room, she passed out herself and relocked the door. But this time she took the key with her instead of leaving it in the lock.