touch. After playing through the airs she
could remember most easily, she ended with
the Last Waltz of Weber. It was Leonard's
favourite, and it was always reserved on that
account to grace the close of the evening's
performance.

She lingered longer than usual over the
last plaintive notes of the waltz; then
suddenly left the piano, and hastened across the
room to the fireplace.

"Surely it has turned much colder, within
the last minute or two," she said, kneeling
down on the rug, and holding her face and
hands over the fire.

"Has it? " returned Leonard. "I don't
feel any change."

"Perhaps I have caught cold," said
Rosamond. "Or perhaps," she added, laughing
rather uneasily, "the wind that goes before
the ghostly lady of the north rooms, has
been blowing over me. I certainly felt
something like a sudden chill, Lenny, while I was
playing the last notes of Weber."

"Nonsense, Rosamond. You are over-
fatigued and over-excited. Tell your maid
to make you some hot wine and water, and
lose no time in getting to bed."

Rosamond cowered closer over the fire.
"It's lucky that I am not superstitious," she
said, "or I might fancy that I was predestined
to see the ghost."

CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH. STANDING ON THE
BRINK.

THE first night at Porthgenna passed without
the slightest noise or interruption of any
kind. No ghost, or dream of a ghost,
disturbed the soundness of Rosamond's slumbers.
She woke in her usual spirits and her usual
health, and was out in the west garden before
breakfast.

The sky was cloudy and the wind veered
about capriciously to all the points of the
compass. In the course of her walk, Rosamond
met with the gardener, and asked him what
he thought about the weather. The man
replied that it might rain again before noon,
but that, unless he was very much mistaken,
it was going to turn to heat in the course of
the next four-and-twenty hours.

"Pray did you ever hear of a room on the
north side of our old house, called the Myrtle
Room?" inquired Rosamond. She had
resolved, on rising that morning, not to lose a
chance of making the all-important discovery
for want of asking questions of everybody in
the neighbourhood; and she began with the
gardener accordingly.

"I never heard tell of it, ma'am," said the
man. "But it's a likely name enough,
considering how the myrtles do grow in these
parts."

"Are there any myrtles growing at the
north side of the house?" asked Rosamond,
struck with the idea of tracing the mysterious
room by searching for it outside the
building instead of inside. "I mean close to
the walls," she added, seeing the man look
puzzled, "under the windows, you know?"

"I never see anything under the windows,
in my time, but weeds and rubbish," replied
the gardener.

Just then the breakfast-bell rang. Rosamond
returned to the house, determining to
explore the north garden, and, if she found
any relic of a bed of myrtles, to mark the
window above it, and to have the room
which that window lighted opened
immediately. She confided this new scheme to her
husband. He complimented her on her
ingenuity, but confessed that he had no great
hope of any discoveries being made out of
doors, after what the gardener had said about
the weeds and rubbish.

As soon as breakfast was over, Rosamond
rang the bell to order the gardener to be in
attendance, and to say that the keys of the
north rooms would be wanted. The summons
was answered by Mr. Frankland's servant,
who brought up with him the morning's
supplies of letters, which the postman had
just delivered. Rosamond turned them
over eagerly, pounced on one with an
exclamation of delight, and said to her husband:
—"The Long Beckley postmark! News from
the vicar, at last!"

She opened the letter and ran her eye over
it—then suddenly dropped it in her lap with
her face all in a glow. "Lenny!" she
exclaimed, "there is news here that is
positively enough to turn one's head. I declare
the vicar's letter has quite taken away my
breath!"

"Read it," said Mr. Frankland, "pray read
it at once."

Rosamond complied with the request in a
very faltering, unsteady voice. Doctor
Chennery began his letter by announcing that his
application to Andrew Treverton had
remained unanswered; but he added that it
had, nevertheless, produced results which no
one could possibly have anticipated. For
information on the subject of those results,
he referred Mr. and Mrs. Frankland to a
copy subjoined of a communication marked
private, which he had received from his man
of business in London. The communication
contained a detailed report of an interview
which had taken place between Mr. Treverton's
servant and the messenger who had
called for an answer to Doctor Chennery's
letter. It described the circumstances (as
coolly related by Shrowl himself) under
which the copy of the Plan of the north
rooms had been made, and it announced the
copyist's readiness to part with the
document for the consideration of a five pound
note. In a postscript, it was further stated
that the messenger had seen the transcribed
Plan, and had ascertained that it really
exhibited the positions of doors, staircases, and
rooms, with the names attached to them, and
that it presented the appearance—as far as