of the woods. Do you mean
that, my dear?"

She nodded, glancing again over her shoulder and partly rising as if
moved by some instinct of flight.

"They are dark enough, for more than one person to have been lost in
their recesses," I observed with another look toward the heavily
curtained windows.

"They certainly are," she assented, reseating herself and eying me
nervously while she spoke. "We are used to the terrors they inspire in
strangers, but if you"--she leaped to her feet in manifest eagerness and
her whole face changed in a way she little realized herself--"if you
have any fear of sleeping amid such gloomy surroundings, we can procure
you a room in the village where you will be more comfortable, and where
we can visit you almost as well as we can here. Shall I do it? Shall I
call----"

My face must have assumed a very grim look, for her words tripped at
that point, and a flush, the first I had seen on her cheek, suffused her
face, giving her an appearance of great distress.

"Oh, I wish Loreen would come! I am not at all happy in my suggestions,"
she said, with a deprecatory twitch of her lip that was one of her
subtle charms. "Oh, there she is! Now I may go," she cried; and without
the least appearance of realizing that she had said anything out of
place, she rushed from the room almost before her sister had entered it.

But not before their eyes had met in a look of unusual significance.

V

A STRANGE HOUSEHOLD

Had I not surprised this look of mutual understanding, I might have
received an impression of Miss Knollys which would in a measure have
counteracted that made by the more nervous and less restrained Lucetta.
The dignified reserve of her bearing, the quiet way in which she
approached, and, above all, the even tones in which she uttered her
welcome, were such as to win my confidence and put me at my ease in the
house of which she was the nominal mistress. But that look! With that in
my memory, I was enabled to pierce below the surface of this placid
nature, and in the very constraint she put upon herself, detect the
presence of the same secret uneasiness which had been so openly, if
unconsciously, manifested by her sister.

She was more beautiful than Lucetta in form and feature, and even more
markedly elegant in her plain black gown and fine lawn ruffles, but she
lacked her sister's evanescent charm, and though admirable to all
appearance, was less lovable on a short acquaintance