As Lady Atherley kindly seconded this invitation I accepted it, though not with the consequences predicted.  Anything less suggestive of the supernatural, or in every way less like the typical ghost-seer, was surely never produced than the round and rubicund little person I found in conversation with the Atherleys.  Mrs. Mallet was a brunette who might once have considered herself a beauty, to judge by the self-conscious and self-satisfied simper which the ghastliest recollections were unable to banish.  As I entered I caught only the last words of Atherley’s speech—­

“——­ treating you well, Mrs. Mallet?”

“Oh no, Sir George,” answered Mrs. Mallet, standing very straight and stiff, with two plump red hands folded demurely before her; “which I have not a word to say against any one, but have met, ever since I come here, with the greatest of kindness and respect.  But the noises, sir, the noises of a night is more than I can abear.”

“Oh, they are only rats, Mrs. Mallet.”

“No rats in this world ever made sech a noise, Sir George; which the very first night as I slep here, there come the most mysterioustest sounds as ever I hear, which I says to Hann, ‘Whatever are you a-doing?’ which she woke up all of a suddent, as young people will, and said she never hear nor yet see nothing.”

“What was the noise like, Mrs. Mallet?”

“Well, Sir George, I can only compare it to the dragging of heavy furniture, which I really thought at first it was her ladyship a-coming upstairs to waken me, took bad with burglars or a fire.”

“But, Mrs. Mallet, I am sure you are too brave a woman to mind a little noise.”

“It is not only noises, Sir George.  Last night—­”

Mrs. Mallet drew a long breath and closed her eyes.

“Yes, Mrs. Mallet, pray go on; I am very curious to hear what did happen last night.”

“It makes the cold chills run over me to think of it.  We was all gone to bed—­leastways the maids and me, and Hann and me was but just got to my room when says she to me, ‘Oh la! whatever do you think?’ says she; ’I promised Ellen when she went out this afternoon as I would shut the windows in the pink bedroom at four o’clock, and never come to think of it till this minute,’ she says.  ‘Oh dear,’ I says, ’and them new chintzes will be entirely ruined with the damp.  Why, what a good-for-nothing girl you are!’ I says, ’and what you thinks on half your time is more than I can tell.’  ‘Whatever shall I do?’ she says, ‘for go along there at this time of night all by myself I dare not,’ says she.  ‘Well,’ I says, ’rather than you should go alone, I’ll go along with you,’ I says, ‘for stay here by myself I would not,’ I says, ‘not if any one was to pay me hundreds.’  So we went down our stairs and along our passage to the door which you go into the gallery, Hann a-clutching hold of me and starting, which when we come into the gallery I was all of a tremble, and she shook so I said, ’La!