again. Hyaena or
lion? Which d' ye think?'

Osbaldistone's hand dropped feebly back from his revolver. His face was
ashen-coloured. Good God! Who was this visitor? The episode of this
black girl was the one thing he had never been able to forget. Shrinking
back into his chair, he gazed as a rabbit may gaze upon the approaching
python.

'Damn the fellow!' He plucked forth his revolver with quivering fingers,
levelled it at his guest, and pulled upon the trigger. The bullet sang
across the room, passed through armchair and screen into the wainscot
beyond.

The smoke cleared; Osbaldistone could still see the unmoved and mocking
eye of his enemy that filled him with a nameless horror. He lifted his
pistol to take a better aim, then--on a strange misgiving--turned the
barrel round upon himself. 'You fool!' muttered the strange visitor
sardonically, and as he spake he vanished as silently as he had come.

IN MY LADY'S BEDCHAMBER

'Well,' said Harry laughingly, as he showed me the family portraits, and
more especially the ladies, on the wall of the panelled dining-room,
'which of them would you choose if you were, like Henry VIII., on the
look-out for a fresh wife?'

'This one, I think,' I replied, as I gazed at a charming fragile beauty
in a big bonnet, beneath which shy eyes looked bewitchingly; 'surely she
was a Frenchwoman and painted by Fragonard?'

'Aha!' cried he, 'you are a bold man, for there are tales told of
her--strange tales of feminine and deadly jealousy for all her soft
demureness. She was French, as you say, and a devoted wife, I believe,
but probably her _mari_ was not as faithful as he should have been. She
is said to haunt the house, but I haven't come across her yet myself.
You are to sleep in her bedchamber,' he added with a smile, 'so perhaps
you may be favoured with the sight of your charmer.'

I pressed naturally for further information, but he put me off by saying
it was too long a story, and that he had many other things to show me
on this my first evening in the manor house.

I had only just arrived by motor. We had dined, and my friend was
showing me round his possessions with all the pride of new and sudden
inheritance. Harry had always been lucky; he had a talent for 'dropping
in' for things unexpectedly. Thus at Eton, though really only thirteenth
man, he had played against Harrow; and now owing to unexpected deaths he
had become the possessor of a charming seventeenth-century