"

"No; how should I? Some eccentricity in one of the Earl's family long
ago, I suppose."

"How very painful! Pray shut it up."

"Was the door locked? It is very mysterious. It must be the spirits."

"But there is no medium present."

"How do you know that? We must conclude that there is, when such things
happen."

"Oh, the door was not locked; it was probably the sudden vibration from
the piano that sent it open."

This conclusion came from Mr. Gascoigne, who begged Miss Merry if
possible to get the key. But this readiness to explain the mystery was
thought by Mrs. Vulcany unbecoming in a clergyman, and she observed in
an undertone that Mr. Gascoigne was always a little too worldly for her
taste. However, the key was produced, and the rector turned it in the
lock with an emphasis rather offensively rationalizing--as who should
say, "it will not start open again"--putting the key in his pocket as a
security.

However, Gwendolen soon reappeared, showing her usual spirits, and
evidently determined to ignore as far as she could the striking change
she had made in the part of Hermione.

But when Klesmer said to her, "We have to thank you for devising a
perfect climax: you could not have chosen a finer bit of _plastik_,"
there was a flush of pleasure in her face. She liked to accept as a
belief what was really no more than delicate feigning. He divined that
the betrayal into a passion of fear had been mortifying to her, and
wished her to understand that he took it for good acting. Gwendolen
cherished the idea that now he was struck with her talent as well as
her beauty, and her uneasiness about his opinion was half turned to
complacency.

But too many were in the secret of what had been included in the
rehearsals, and what had not, and no one besides Klesmer took the
trouble to soothe Gwendolen's imagined mortification. The general
sentiment was that the incident should be let drop.

There had really been a medium concerned in the starting open of the
panel: one who had quitted the room in haste and crept to bed in much
alarm of conscience. It was the small Isabel, whose intense curiosity,
unsatisfied by the brief glimpse she had had of the strange picture on
the day of arrival at Offendene, had kept her on the watch for an
opportunity of finding out where Gwendolen had put the key, of stealing
it from the discovered drawer when the rest of the family were out, and
getting on a stool to unlock the panel. While