"No, nor the fourth of two years," answered my employer. "There is
something queer about that house."

"You don't think it is haunted, sir, do you?" I ventured.

"Of course not," said Mr. Craven, irritably; "but I do think some one
wants to keep the place vacant, and is succeeding admirably."

The question I next put seemed irrelevant, but really resulted from a
long train of thought. This was it:

"Is Miss Elmsdale very handsome, sir?"

"She is very beautiful," was the answer; "but not so beautiful as her
mother was."

Ah me! two old, old stories in a sentence. He had loved the mother, and
he did not love the daughter. He had seen the mother in his bright,
hopeful youth, and there was no light of morning left for him in which
he could behold the child.

To other eyes she might, in her bright spring-time, seem lovely as an
angel from heaven, but to him no more such visions were to be
vouchsafed.

If beauty really went on decaying, as the ancients say, by this time
there could be no beauty left. But oh! greybeard, the beauty remains,
though our eyes may be too dim to see it; the beauty, the grace, the
rippling laughter, and the saucy smiles, which once had power to stir to