ting lodgings for a long time?" I asked. "I suppose it
could be fifteen--twenty years ago that strangers to you lived in this
room?"

"Longer than that," she said quietly, dropping for the moment all
affectation. "We came here from the farm when my father died. He had
had losses, and there was but little left. That is twenty-seven years
ago now."

I hastened to close the conversation, fearing long-winded recollections
of "better days." I have heard such so often from one landlady and
another. I had not learnt much. Who was the original of the miniature,
how it came to be lying forgotten in the dusty book-case were still
mysteries; and with a strange perversity I could not have explained to
myself I shrank from putting a direct question.

So two days more passed by. My work took gradually a firmer grip upon my
mind, and the face of the miniature visited me less often. But in the
evening of the third day, which was a Sunday, a curious thing happened.

I was returning from a stroll, and dusk was falling as I reached the
cottage. I had been thinking of my farce, and I was laughing to myself
at a situation that seemed to me comical, when, passing the window of my
room, I saw looking out the sweet fair face that had become so familiar
to me. It stood close to the latticed panes, a slim, girlish figure,
clad in the old-fashioned lilac-coloured frock in which I had imagined it
on the first night of my arrival, the beautiful hands clasped across the
breast, as then they had been folded on the lap. Her eyes were gazing
down the road that passes through the village and goes south, but they
seemed to be dreaming, not seeing, and the sadness in them struck upon
one almost as a cry. I was close to the window, but the hedge screened
me, and I remained watching, until, after a minute I suppose, though it
appeared longer, the figure drew back into the darkness of the room and
disappeared.

I entered, but the room was empty. I called, but no one answered. The
uncomfortable suggestion took hold of me that I must be growing a little
crazy. All that had gone before I could explain to myself as a mere
train of thought, but this time it had come to me suddenly, uninvited,
while my thoughts had been busy elsewhere. This thing had appeared not
to my brain but to my senses. I am not a believer in ghosts, but I am in
the hallucinations of a weak mind, and my own explanation was in
consequence not very satisfactory to myself