Von Funkelstein spoke again in an unknown tongue.  The plate began to move as before.  After only a second or two of preparatory gyration, Hugh felt that it was writing Turriepuffit, and shook from head to foot.

Suddenly, in the middle of the word, the plate ceased its motion, and lay perfectly still.  Hugh felt a kind of surprise come upon him, as if he waked from an unpleasant dream, and saw the sun shining.  The morbid excitement of his nervous system had suddenly ceased, and a healthful sense of strength and every-day life took its place.

Simultaneously with the stopping of the plate, and this new feeling which I have tried to describe, Hugh involuntarily raised his eyes towards the door of the room.  In the all-but-darkness between him and the door, he saw a pale beautiful face —­ a face only.  It was the face of Margaret Elginbrod; not, however, such as he had used to see it —­ but glorified.  That was the only word by which he could describe its new aspect.  A mist of darkness fell upon his brain, and the room swam round with him.  But he was saved from falling, or attracting attention to a weakness for which he could have made no excuse, by a sudden cry from Lady Emily.

“See! see!” she cried wildly, pointing towards one of the windows.

These looked across to another part of the house, one of the oldest, at some distance. —­ One of its windows, apparently on the first floor, shone with a faint bluish light.

All the company had hurried to the window at Lady Emily’s exclamation.

“Who can be in that part of the house?” said Mr. Arnold, angrily.

“It is Lady Euphrasia’s window,” said Euphra, in a low voice, the tone of which suggested, somehow, that the speaker was very cold.

“What do you mean by speaking like that?” said Mr. Arnold, forgetting his dignity.  “Surely you are above being superstitious.  Is it possible the servants could be about any mischief?  I will discharge any one at once, that dares go there without permission.”

The light disappeared, fading slowly out.

“Indeed, the servants are all too much alarmed, after what took place last year, to go near that wing —­ much less that room,” said Euphra.  “Besides, Mrs. Horton has all the keys in her own charge.”

“Go yourself and get me them, Euphra.  I will see at once what this means.  Don’t say why you want them.”

“Certainly not, uncle.”

Hugh had recovered almost instantaneously.  Though full of amazement, he had yet his perceptive faculties sufficiently unimpaired to recognise the real source of the light in the window.  It seemed to him more like moonlight than anything else; and he thought the others would have seen it to be such, but for the effect of Lady Emily’s sudden exclamation.  Perhaps she was under the influence of the Bohemian at the moment.  Certainly they were all in a tolerable condition for seeing whatever might be required