the Master--I do suppose he made enquiry. She's always at hugger-mugger
with Anne Wixted. I'll pack that _one_ about her business, if she doesn't
mind. Tattling and whispering eternally. It's not about her own business
she's a-talking. Madame de la Rougepot, I call her. She _does_ know how to
paint up to the ninety-nines--she does, the old cat. I beg your pardon,
Miss, but _that_ she is--a devil, and no mistake. I found her out first by
her thieving the Master's gin, that the doctor ordered him, and filling the
decanter up with water--the old villain; but she'll be found out yet, she
will; and all the maids is afraid on her. She's not right, they think--a
witch or a ghost--I should not wonder. Catherine Jones found her in her bed
asleep in the morning after she sulked with you, you know, Miss, with all
her clothes on, what-ever was the meaning; and I think she has frightened
_you,_ Miss and has you as nervous as anythink--I do,' and so forth.

It was true. I _was_ nervous, and growing rather more so; and I think this
cynical woman perceived and intended it, and was pleased. I was always
afraid of her concealing herself in my room, and emerging at night to scare
me. She began sometimes to mingle in my dreams, too--always awfully; and
this nourished, of course, the kind of ambiguous fear in which, in waking
hours, I held her.

I dreamed one night that she led me, all the time whispering something so
very fast that I could not understand her, into the library, holding
a candle in her other hand above her head. We walked on tiptoe, like
criminals at the dead of night, and stopped before that old oak cabinet
which my father had indicated in so odd a way to me. I felt that we were
about some contraband practice. There was a key in the door, which I
experienced a guilty horror at turning, she whispering in the same
unintelligible way, all the time, at my ear. I _did_ turn it; the door
opened quite softly, and within stood my father, his face white and