Janet found that she was not to occupy the same bed-room as on her first visit to Deepley Walls, but one nearer that of Sister Agnes.  She was not sorry for this, for there had been a secret dread upon her of having to sleep in a room so near that occupied by the body of Sir John Chillington.  She had never forgotten her terrible experience in connection with the Black Room, and she wished to keep herself entirely free from any such influences in time to come.  The first question she asked Dance when they reached her bed-room was—­

“Does Sister Agnes still visit the Black Room every midnight?”

“Yes, for sure,” answered Dance.  “There is no one but her to do it.  Her ladyship would not allow any of the servants to enter the room.  Rather than that, I believe she would herself do what has to be done there.  Sister Agnes would not neglect that duty if she was dying.”

Janet said no more, but then and there she made up her mind to a certain course of action of which nothing would have made her believe herself capable only an hour before.

Early next forenoon she was summoned to an interview with Lady Chillington.  Her heart beat more quickly than common as she was ushered by Dance into the old woman’s dressing-room.

Her ladyship was in demi-toilette—­made up in part for the day, but not yet finished.  Her black wig, with its long corkscrew curls, was carefully adjusted; her rouge and powder were artistically laid on, her eyebrows elaborately pointed, and in so far she looked as she always looked when visible to anyone but her maid.  But her figure wanted bracing up, so to speak, and looked shrunken and shrivelled in the old cashmere dressing-robe, from which at that early hour she had not emerged.  Her fingers—­long, lean and yellow—­were decorated with some half-dozen valuable rings.  Increasing years had not tended to make her hands steadier than Janet remembered them as being when she last saw her ladyship; and of late it had become a matter of some difficulty with her to keep her head quite still:  it seemed possessed by an unaccountable desire to imitate the shaking of her hands.  She was seated in an easy-chair as Janet entered the room.  Her breakfast equipage was on a small table at her elbow.

As the door closed behind Janet, she stood still and curtsied.

Lady Chillington placed her glass to her eye, and with a lean forefinger beckoned to Janet to draw near.  Janet advanced, her eyes fixed steadily on those of Lady Chillington.  A yard or two from the table she stopped and curtsied again.

“I hope that I have the happiness of finding your ladyship quite well,” she said, in a low, clear voice, in which there was not the slightest tremor or hesitation.

“And pray, Miss Hope, what can it matter to you whether I am well or ill?  Answer me that, if you please.”

“I owe so much to your ladyship, I have been such a pensioner on your bounty ever since I can remember anything, that mere selfishness alone, if no higher motive be allowed me, must always prompt me to feel an interest in the state of your ladyship’s health.”