eg?" she thought, chuckling
softly to herself. "And that is what it sounds like. No wonder the
servants call this corridor 'the ghost walk.' Well, me for bed!"

She had already snapped out the electric light in the bathroom, and now
hopped into bed, reaching up to pull the chain of the reading light as she
did so. The top of one window was down half-way and the noise of the city
at midnight reached her ear in a dull monotone.

Back here at the rear of the great mansion, street sounds were faint. In
the distance, to the eastward, was the roar of a passing elevated train.
An automobile horn hooted raucously.

But steadily, through all other sounds, as an accompaniment to them and to
Helen Morrell's own thoughts, was the continuous rustle in the corridor
outside her door:

_Step--put; step--put; step--put._

CHAPTER X

MORNING

The Starkweather mansion was a large dwelling. Built some years before the
Civil War, it had been one of the "great houses" in its day, to be pointed
out to the mid-nineteenth century visitor to the metropolis. Of course,
when the sightseeing coaches came in fashion they went up Fifth Avenue and
passed by the stately mansions of the Victorian era, on Madison Avenue,
without comment.

Willets Starkweather had sprung from a quite mean and un-noted branch of
the family, and had never, until middle life, expected to live in the
Madison Avenue homestead. The important members of his clan were dead and
gone and their great fortunes scattered. Willets Starkweather could barely
keep up with the expenditures of his great household.

There were never servants enough, and Mrs. Olstrom, the very capable
housekeeper, who had served the present master's great-uncle before the
day of the new generation, had hard work to satisfy the demands of those
there were upon the means allowed her by Mr. Starkweather.

There were rooms in the house--especially upon the topmost floor--into
which even the servants seldom went. There were vacant rooms which never
knew broom nor duster. The dwelling, indeed, was altogether too large for
the needs of Mr. Starkweather and his three motherless daughters.

But their living in it gave them a prestige which nothing else could. As
wise as any match-making matron, Willets Starkweather knew that the
family's address at this particular number on Madison Avenue would aid his
daughters more in "making a good match" than anything else.

He could not dower them. Really, t