"What did she say? Was it something you would rather not repeat?"
"No! no! I am most anxious to repeat it, and to hear what you think it means. As I have just told you, Lenny, we had been talking of Porthgenna, and of my project of exploring the north rooms as soon as I got there; and she had been asking many questions about the old house; appearing, I must say, to be unaccountably interested in it, considering she was a stranger."
"Yes?"
"Well, when she came to the bedside, she knelt down close at my ear, and whispered all on a sudden—'When you go to Porthgenna, keep out of the Myrtle Room!'"
Mr. Frankland started. "Is there such a room at Porthgenna?" he asked, eagerly.
"I never heard of it," said Rosamond.
"Are you sure of that?" inquired Mr. Orridge. Up to this moment the doctor had privately suspected that Mrs. Frankland must have fallen asleep soon after he left her the evening before; and that the narrative which she was now relating, with the sincerest conviction of its reality, was actually derived from nothing but a series of vivid impressions produced by a dream.
"I am certain I never heard of such a room," said Rosamond. "I left Porthgenna at five years old; and I had never heard of it then. My father often talked of the house in after-years; but I am certain that he never spoke of any of the rooms by any particular names; and I can say the same of your father, Lenny, whenever I was in his company after he had bought the place. Besides, don't you remember, when the builder we sent down to survey the house wrote you that letter, he complained that there were no names of the rooms on the different keys to guide him in opening the doors, and that he could get no information from any body at Porthgenna on the subject? How could I ever have heard of the Myrtle Room? Who was there to tell me?"
Mr. Orridge began to look perplexed; it seemed by no means so certain that Mrs. Frankland had been dreaming, after all.
"I have thought of nothing else," said Rosamond to her husband, in low, whispering tones. "I can't get those mysterious words off my mind. Feel my heart, Lenny—it is beating quicker than usual only with saying them over to you. They are such very strange, startling words. What do you think they mean?"