demanded Rose, her eyes quite
flashing.

"Certainly you are to see her, and to fetch her jelly, and chicken, and
toast, and tea, if you will; but you are not to speak of the ghost. That
blood-curdling subject is absolutely tabooed in the sick-room, unless--"

"Unless what?" inquired Rose, angrily.

"Unless you want to make a maniac of her. I am serious in this; you must
not allude in the remotest way to the cause of her illness when you
visit her, or you may regret your indiscretion while you live."

He spoke with a gravity that showed that he was in earnest. Rose
shrugged her shoulders impatiently, and walked to Agnes' door. Grace
followed at a sign from her brother, who ran down stairs.

The sick girl was not asleep--she lay with her eyes wide open, staring
vacantly at the white wall. She looked at them, when they entered, with
a half-frightened, half-inquiring gaze.

"Are you better, Agnes?" asked Rose, looking down at the colourless
face.

"Oh, yes!"

She answered nervously, her fingers twisting in and out of her
bed-clothes--her eyes wandering uneasily from one to the other.

"Wouldn't you like something to eat?" inquired Rose, not knowing what
else to say.

"Oh, no!"

"You had better have some tea," said Grace decisively. "It will do you
good. I will fetch you up some presently. Rose, there is the breakfast
bell."

Rose, with a parting nod to Agnes, went off, very much disappointed, and
in high dudgeon with Doctor Frank for not letting her cross-examine the
seamstress on the subject of the ghost.

"The ghost she saw must have been Mr. Richards returning from his
midnight stroll," thought Rose, shrewdly. "My opinion is, he is the only
ghost in Danton Hall."

There was very little allusion made to the affair of last night, at the
breakfast-table. It seemed to be tacitly understood that the subject was
disagreeable; and beyond an inquiry of the Doctor, "How is your patient
this morning?" nothing was said. But all felt vaguely there was some
mystery. Doctor Frank's theory of optical illusion satisfied no
one--there was something at the bottom that they did not understand.

The stormy day grew stormier as it wore on. Rose sat down at the
drawing-room piano after breakfast, and tried to while away the forlorn
morning with music. Kate was there, trying to work off a bad headache
with a complicated piece of embroidery and a conversation with Mr.
Reginald Stanford. That gentleman sat on an ottoman at h