t the
Friary! Many thanks for your escort, Mr. Dancy."

"Many thanks for allowing me to escort you," he returned, pointedly:
"after what you have told me, I esteem it an honor, Miss Challoner.
No, you have no need to be ashamed of your position; I wish more
English ladies would follow such a noble example. Good-night. I trust
we shall meet again." And, lifting his felt hat, he withdrew, just as
Nan appeared on the threshold, holding a lamp in her hand.

"You naughty girl, what has kept you so late?" she asked, as Phillis
came slowly and meditatively up the flagged path.

"Hush, Nannie! Have they all gone to bed? Let me come into your room
and talk to you. Oh, I have had such an evening!" And thereupon she
poured into her sister's astonished ears the recital of her
adventure,--the storm, the figure in the shubbery, the scene in the
west corridor, the porch at Ivy Cottage, and the arrival of Mrs.
Williams's mysterious lodger.

"Oh, Phillis, I shall never trust you out of my sight again! How can
you be so reckless,--so incautious? Mother would be dreadfully shocked
if she knew it."

"Mother must not know a single word: promise, Nan. You know how
nervous she is. I will tell her, if you like, that I took refuge from
the rain in Mrs. Williams's porch, and that her lodger walked home
with me; but I think it would be better to suppress the scene at the
White House."

Nan thought over this a moment, and then she agreed.

"It would make mother feel uneasy and timid in Mrs. Cheyne's
presence," she observed. "She never likes that sort of hysterical
attacks. We could not make her understand. Poor thing! I hope she is
asleep by this time. Shall you go to-morrow, Phil, and ask after
her?"

Phillis made a wry face at this, and owned she had had enough
adventures to last her for a long time. But she admitted, too, that
she would be anxious to know how Mrs. Cheyne would be.

"Yes, I suppose I must go and just ask after her," she said, as she
rose rather wearily and lighted her candle. "There is not the least
chance of my seeing her. Good-night, Nannie! Don't let all this keep
you awake; but I do not expect to sleep a wink myself."

Which dismal prophecy was not fulfilled, as Phillis dropped into a
heavy slumber the moment her head touched the pillow.

But her dreams were hardly pleasant. She thought she was walking down
the "ghost's walk," between the yews and cypresses, with Mr. Dancy,
and that in the darkest part he thre