It was about the fourth day of the visit that Plantagenet, loitering in the hall with Venetia, said to her, ’I saw your mamma go into the locked-up rooms last night.  I do so wish that she would let us go there.’

‘Last night!’ said Venetia; ‘when could you have seen her last night?’

’Very late:  the fact is, I could not sleep, and I took it into my head to walk up and down the gallery.  I often do so at the abbey.  I like to walk up and down an old gallery alone at night.  I do not know why; but I like it very much.  Everything is so still, and then you hear the owls.  I cannot make out why it is; but nothing gives me more pleasure than to get up when everybody is asleep.  It seems as if one were the only living person in the world.  I sometimes think, when I am a man, I will always get up in the night, and go to bed in the daytime.  Is not that odd?’

‘But mamma!’ said Venetia, ‘how came you to see mamma?’

‘Oh!  I am certain of it,’ said the boy; ’for, to tell you the truth, I was rather frightened at first; only I thought it would not do for a Cadurcis to be afraid, so I stood against the wall, in the shade, and I was determined, whatever happened, not to cry out.’

‘Oh! you frighten me so, Plantagenet!’ said Venetia.

’Ah! you might well have been frightened if you had been there; past midnight, a tall white figure, and a light!  However, there is nothing to be alarmed about; it was Lady Annabel, nobody else.  I saw her as clearly as I see you now.  She walked along the gallery, and went to the very door you showed me the other morning.  I marked the door; I could not mistake it.  She unlocked it, and she went in.’

‘And then?’ inquired Venetia, eagerly.

‘Why, then, like a fool, I went back to bed,’ said Plantagenet.  ’I thought it would seem so silly if I were caught, and I might not have had the good fortune to escape twice.  I know no more.’

Venetia could not reply.  She heard a laugh, and then her mother’s voice.  They were called with a gay summons to see a colossal snow-ball, that some of the younger servants had made and rolled to the window of the terrace-room.  It was ornamented with a crown of holly and mistletoe, and the parti-coloured berries looked bright in a straggling sunbeam which had fought its way through the still-loaded sky, and fell upon the terrace.

In the evening, as they sat round the fire, Mrs. Cadurcis began telling Venetia a long rambling ghost story, which she declared was a real ghost story, and had happened in her own family.  Such communications were not very pleasing to Lady Annabel, but she was too well bred to interrupt her guest.  When, however, the narrative was finished, and Venetia, by her observations, evidently indicated the effect that it had produced upon her mind, her mother took the occasion of impressing upon her the little credibility which should be attached to such legends, and the rational process by which