The Haunted Chamber

And now once again there is almost the same party brought together at Dynecourt. Old Lady FitzAlmont and Lady Gertrude are here again, and so are Captain and Mrs. Ringwood, both the gayest of the gay. Dora Talbot is here too, somewhat chastened and subdued both in manner and expression, a change so much for the better that she finds her list of lovers to be longer now than in the days of yore.

It is an exquisite, balmy day in early April. The sun is shining hotly without, drinking up greedily the gentle shower that fell half an hour ago. The guests, who with their host and hostess have been wandering idly through the grounds, decide to go in-doors.

"It was on a day like this, though in the autumn, that we first missed Sir Adrian," remarks some one in a half tone confidentially to some one else, but not so low that the baronet can not hear it.

"Yes," he says quickly, "and it was just over there"--pointing to a clump of shrubs near the hall door--"that I parted with that unfortunate cousin of mine."

Lady Dynecourt shudders, and draws closer to her husband.

"It was such a marvelous story," observes a pretty woman who was not at the castle last autumn, when what so nearly proved to be a tragedy was being enacted; "quite like a legend or a medieval romance. Dear Lady Dynecourt's finding him was such a happy finish to it. I must say I have always had the greatest veneration for those haunted chambers, so seldom to be found now in any house. Perhaps my regard for them is the stronger because I never saw one."

"No?" questioningly. "Will you come and see ours now?" says Sir Adrian readily.

His wife clasps his arm, and a pang contracts her brow.

"You are not frightened now, surely?" says Adrian, smiling at her very tenderly.

"Yes, I am," she responds promptly. "The very name of that awful room unnerves me. There is something evil in it, I believe. Do not go there."

"I'll block it up forever if you wish it," declares Sir Adrian; "but, for the last time, let me go and show its ghostly beauties to Lady Laughton. I confess, even after all that has happened, it possesses no terrors for me; it only reminds me of my unpleasant kinsman."

"I wonder what became of him," remarks Ringwood. "He's at the other side of the world, I should imagine."