ed into her eyes, and she cried shudderingly: "Oh, how strange
it is!"

"You do not doubt it? You do not doubt it still?" exclaimed Miss
Ludington, in anguished tones.

"No, no!" said the girl, recovering herself with an evident effort. "I
cannot doubt it. I do not," and she threw her aims about Miss Ludington's
neck in an embrace in which, nevertheless, a subtle shrinking still
mingled with the impulse of tenderness which had overcome it.

When presently Miss Ludington and Ida went upstairs together, the latter,
with eager, unhesitating step, led the way through a complexity of
roundabout passages, and past many other doors, to that of the chamber
which had been the common possession of the girl and the woman. Miss
Ludington followed her, wondering, yet not wondering.

"It seems so strange to see you so familiar with this house," she said,
with a little hysterical laugh, "and yet, of course, I know it is not
strange."

"No," replied the girl, looking at her with a certain astonishment, "I
should think not. It would be strange, indeed, if I were not familiar
here. The only strange thing is to feel that I am not at home here, that
I am a guest in this house."

"You are not a guest," exclaimed Miss Ludington, hurriedly, for she saw
the dazed look coming again into the girl's eyes. "You shall be mistress
here. Paul and I ask nothing better than to be your servants."

To pass from the waking to the dreaming state is in general to exchange a
prosaic and matter-of-fact world for one of fantastic improbabilities;
but it is safe to assume that the three persons who fell asleep beneath
Miss Ludington's roof that morning, just as the birds began to twitter,
encountered in dreamland no experiences so strange as those which they
had passed through with their eyes open the previous evening.

CHAPTER IX.

The day following, Paul was downstairs before either Ida or Miss
Ludington. He was sitting on the piazza, which was connected with the
sitting-room by low windows opening like doors, when he heard a scream,
and Ellen, the housemaid, who had been busy in the sitting-room, ran out
upon the piazza with a face like a sheet.

"What's the matter?" he demanded.

"Sure I saw a ghost!" gasped Ellen. "I was on a chair dusting the
picture, as I always does mornings, an' I looked up, an' there in the
door stood the very same girl that's in the picture, kind of smiling
like. And so I give a yell an' run."

As she spoke I