thur
Dynecourt.

"You have often asked to see the 'haunted chamber,'" he says; "why not
come and visit it now? It isn't much to see, you know; but still, in a
ghostly sense, it is, I suppose, interesting."

"Let us make a party and go together," suggests Dora, enthusiastically
clasping her hands--her favorite method of showing false emotion of
any kind. She is determined to have her part in the programme, and is
equally determined that Florence shall go nowhere alone with Sir Adrian.

"What a capital idea!" puts in Arthur Dynecourt, coming up to Miss
Delmaine, and specially addressing her with all the air of a rightful
owner.

"Charming," murmurs a young lady standing by; and so the question is
settled.

"It will be rather a fatiguing journey, you know," says Captain
Ringwood, confidentially, to Ethel Villiers. "It's an awful lot of
stairs; I've been there, so I know all about it--it's worse than the
treadmill."

"Have you been there too?" demands Miss Ethel saucily, glancing at him
from under her long lashes.

"Not yet," answers the captain, with a little grin. "But, I say, don't
go--will you?"

"I must; I'm dying to see it," replies Ethel. "You needn't come, you
know; I dare say I shall be able to get on without you for half an hour
or so."

"I dare say you could get on uncommonly well without me forever,"
retorts the captain rather gloomily. To himself he confesses moodily
that this girl with the auburn hair and the blue eyes has the power of
taking the "curl out of him" whensoever she wishes.

"I believe you are afraid of the bogies hidden in this secret chamber,
and so don't care to come," says Miss Villiers tauntingly.

"I know something else I'm a great deal more afraid of," responds the
gallant captain meaningly.

"Me?" she asks innocently, but certainly coquettishly. "Oh, Captain
Ringwood"--in a tone of mock injury--"what an unkind speech! Now I know
you look upon me in the light of an ogress, or a witch, or something
equally dreadful. Well, as I have the name of it, I may as well have
the gain of it, and so--I command you to attend me to the 'haunted
chamber.'"

"You order--I obey," says the captain. "'Call and I follow--I follow,
though I die!'" After which quotation he accompanies her toward the
house in the wake of Dora and Sir Adrian, who has been pressed by the
clever widow into her service.

Florence and Arthur Dynecourt follow them, Arthur talking gayly, as
though determined to igno