Even a maid might be a
princess in disguise.

Lady Benyon was going to stay all night, and at her special request
Mildred and Beth were allowed to sit up to late dinner and prayers.
She expected Beth to amuse her, but Beth was busy the whole time
weaving a romance about the lovely lady's-maid, and scarcely spoke a
word. When the servants came in to prayers, she sat and gazed at her
heroine, and forgot to stand or kneel. She noticed, however, that
Uncle James read the evening prayers with peculiar fervour.

When Beth went to bed, she found Bernadine, who slept with her, fast
asleep. Beth was not at all sleepy. Her intellect had been on the
alert all day, and would not let her rest now; she must do something
to keep up the excitement. She pulled the blind aside, and, looking
out of the window, discovered an enchanted land, all soft shadow and
silver sheen, and above it an exquisite moon, in an empty sky, floated
serenely. "Oh, to be out in the moonlight!" she sighed to herself.
"The fairy-folk--the fairy-folk." For a little her mind was a blank as
she gazed; then words came tripping a measure--

"The fairy-folk are calling me,
Are calling me, are calling me;
They come across the stormy sea,
To play with me, to play with me."

Beth's vague longing crisped itself into a resolution. She looked at
the big four-post bed. The curtains were drawn on one side of it.
Should she draw them on the other, on the chance of her mother not
looking in? No, she must wait, because of Mildred. Mildred was
undressing, and would say her prayers presently. Beth waited until she
knelt down, then slipped her night-dress on over her clothes, and got
into bed, without disturbing Bernadine. Now she must wait for her
mother; but Mrs. Caldwell came up very soon, Uncle James having
hurried every one off to bed unusually early that evening. Mrs.
Caldwell was a long time undressing, as it seemed to Beth; but in the
meantime Mildred had fallen asleep, and very soon after her mother got
into bed she too began to breathe with reassuring regularity.

Then Beth got up, opened the door very gently, and slipped out into
the dark passage.

"The fairy-folk are calling me,
Are calling me, are calling me;
They come across the stormy sea,
To play with me, to play with me."

The words set themselves to a merry tune, and carried Beth on with
them.

All was dark in the hall. The front door was locked and bolted, and
t