The secret conference in the drawing-room was not tedious, nor indeed very secret, for anyone acquainted with the diplomatic slang in which such affairs were conducted might have learned in the lobby, or indeed in the hall, so mighty was the voice of the stranger, that there was no chance of any settlement without a meeting which was fixed to take place at twelve o’clock next day on the Fifteen Acres.

CHAPTER XI.

SOME TALK ABOUT THE HAUNTED HOUSE—­BEING, AS I SUPPOSE, ONLY OLD WOMAN’S TALES.

Old Sally always attended her young mistress while she prepared for bed—­not that Lilias required help, for she had the spirit of neatness and a joyous, gentle alacrity, and only troubled the good old creature enough to prevent her thinking herself grown old and useless.

Sally, in her quiet way, was garrulous, and she had all sorts of old-world tales of wonder and adventure, to which Lilias often went pleasantly to sleep; for there was no danger while old Sally sat knitting there by the fire, and the sound of the rector’s mounting upon his chairs, as was his wont, and taking down and putting up his books in the study beneath, though muffled and faint, gave evidence that that good and loving influence was awake and busy.

Old Sally was telling her young mistress, who sometimes listened with a smile, and sometimes lost a good five minutes together of her gentle prattle, how the young gentleman, Mr. Mervyn, had taken that awful old haunted habitation, the Tiled House ‘beyant at Ballyfermot,’ and was going to stay there, and wondered no one had told him of the mysterious dangers of that desolate mansion.

It stood by a lonely bend of the narrow road.  Lilias had often looked upon the short, straight, grass-grown avenue with an awful curiosity at the old house which she had learned in childhood to fear as the abode of shadowy tenants and unearthly dangers.

’There are people, Sally, nowadays, who call themselves free-thinkers, and don’t believe in anything—­even in ghosts,’ said Lilias.

’A then the place he’s stopping in now, Miss Lily, ’ill soon cure him of free-thinking, if the half they say about it’s true,’ answered Sally.

’But I don’t say, mind, he’s a free-thinker, for I don’t know anything of Mr. Mervyn; but if he be not, he must be very brave, or very good, indeed.  I know, Sally, I should be horribly afraid, indeed, to sleep in it myself,’ answered Lilias, with a cosy little shudder, as the aerial image of the old house for a moment stood before her, with its peculiar malign, sacred, and skulking aspect, as if it had drawn back in shame and guilt under the melancholy old elms among the tall hemlock and nettles.

‘And now, Sally, I’m safe in bed.  Stir the fire, my old darling.’  For although it was the first week in May, the night was frosty.  ’And tell me all about the Tiled House again, and frighten me out of my wits.’