th her
whose smile had been their harbinger.

"But I am forgetting, Lord Brompton, the object of our coming here," she
exclaimed at last. "I want to know the secrets of Ripon House. Where is
the haunted chamber?"

Geoffrey smiled, and rising from his seat walked to the other side of
the room and touched a spring in the wainscot. A panel flew to one side
and revealed a narrow aperture.

"Follow me if you have a brave heart," he cried, looking back.

The apartment in which they were sitting was the library and this exit
was a curious winding staircase, which gradually grew less dark as they
proceeded. At last they found themselves in a sort of antechamber,
scarcely large enough to turn about in, formed by a bay or projection.
There was an oak seat with the Ripon arms carved on the back. Above it a
tiny window, showing the great thickness of the wall, let in a few rays
of light.

"Sit down--sh!" said Lord Brompton, and he put his finger to his lips
and nodded toward a low door which was visible a few feet beyond. "It is
there."

"Oh, this is delightful. Is it a real, genuine, ancestral ghost?"

"In that chamber the Lady Marian Ripon, an ancestress of mine, is said
to have died of a broken heart. Her husband, the great-grandson of the
Lord Brompton whose portrait you think I resemble, was killed at Teb,
and three days after her body was borne to the tomb. This was her
private chamber, and here her spirit is said still to linger. It is not
a very original ghost, but its authenticity is unquestioned."

"Have you ever crossed the threshold?" asked the girl, with mock
solemnity.

"Not since childhood, and then only in fear and trembling."

"This is beginning to be positively weird and uncanny," she murmured,
"but I propose to defy the spectre and enter."

"Have a care--have a care. But you have no key, Miss Windsor."

She was shaking the handle, which seemed loose and flimsy. "Help me. It
is not fastened," she cried.

They bent their united strength upon the door, which creaked, groaned,
and finally burst open with a crash, causing the dust to fly so that
Maggie gave a little shriek of dismay. Complete silence and darkness
followed the onslaught, and then with a whisper of "Who's afraid?" she
drew forth a lamp of diminutive proportions and Etruscan design, and
turning the crank produced a brilliant electric flame, which permeated
the damp and gloom of the ghostly chamber.

Here was, indeed, a monument to decay