"Very true, Miss Winter--I should think as you do. May I ask," added Conroy, speaking on the impulse of the moment, and without due thought, "whether any light has been thrown on the fate of that missing girl, who--who was so mysteriously lost here?"
"None whatever," answered Ella sadly, the gladness dying out of her eyes. "A mystery it is, and a mystery it seems likely to remain. I need scarcely say that it is a great trouble to me. The worst is, the poor sister, Susan, who is not very bright in intellect, is still beset by the hallucination, for I can term it nothing else, that on moonlight nights her sister may sometimes be seen gazing out of her bedroom window; and she comes up to, as she fancies, look at her. Nothing can shake her fixed belief that Katherine, either alive or dead, is still hidden somewhere in the Hall."
"It is strange how the girl's mind should have become so thoroughly imbued with such an idea."
Ella could not repress a shudder. Might there not, after all, be some foundation for poor Susan's wild fancies? Whose hands had covered up the looking-glass in Katherine's bedroom? Whence had come and whither had vanished that figure which the two housemaids had seen gazing down upon them from the gallery? How account by any reasonable theory for the fright undergone by Mrs. Carlyon? It was a mystery that weighed upon Ella day and night; a burden from which her mind could never entirely free itself. Many people under like circumstances would have shut up the old house and made a home elsewhere, but to Ella it seemed that if the fate of the missing girl were ever to be cleared up it must be cleared up on the spot; and on the spot she determined to remain.
Something was said about a picture in the adjoining room--Philip Cleeve declaring that one of the photographs resembled it. The three younger members of the party went into the room to solve the question, leaving Mrs. Carlyon and the Vicar at their game. Hubert Stone saw his chance; he made a bold stroke, emerged from his hiding-place, silently crossed the room, and quitted it.
"Who on earth was that?" exclaimed the Vicar.
"Who was what?" asked Mrs. Carlyon, who sat with her back to the windows and saw nothing.
"Some tall young fellow crossed the room from the window. How did he come in? It looked like Hubert Stone. Yes; I am sure it was he."
"Oh, then he had probably come in to ask some question or other of his mistress; and seeing visitors here, went out again," decided Mrs. Carlyon with composure. "A well-mannered young man, very, that; might be taken by anyone for a gentleman."
And so the evening came to an end, and Mr. Conroy departed again.