ut my arms with the
intention of clasping my unknown visitor round the neck. But I was not
quick enough. The kisses ceased, my hands met each other in the empty
air, and I heard a faint noise of garments trailing across the floor. I
started up in bed, and called out, in a frightened voice, "Who's there?"

"Hush! not a word!" whispered a voice out of the darkness. Then I heard
the door of my room softly closed, and I felt that I was alone.

I was left as wide awake as ever I had been in my life. My child's heart
was filled with an unspeakable yearning, and yet the darkness and the
mystery frightened me. It could not be Miss Chinfeather who had visited
me, I argued with myself. The lips that had touched mine were not those
of a corpse, but were instinct with life and love. Who, then, could my
mysterious visitor be? Not Lady Chillington, surely! I half started up
in bed at the thought. Just as I did so, without warning of any kind, a
solemn muffled tramp became audible in the room immediately over mine. A
tramp, slow, heavy, measured, from one end of the room to the other, and
then back again. I slipped back into the bedclothes and buried myself up
to the ears. I could hear the beating of my heart, oppressed now with a
new terror before which the lesser one faded utterly. The very monotony
of that dull measured walk was enough to unstring the nerves of a child,
coming as it did in the middle of the night. I tried to escape from it
by going still deeper under the clothes, but I could hear it even then.
Since I could not escape it altogether, I had better listen to it with
all my ears, for it was quite possible that it might come down stairs,
and so into my room. Had such a thing happened, I think I should have
died from sheer terror. Happily for me nothing of the kind took place;
and, still listening, I fell asleep at last from utter weariness, and
knew nothing more till I was awoke by a stray sunbeam smiting me across
the eyes.

CHAPTER III.

A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY.

A golden sunbeam was shining through a crevice in the blinds; the birds
were twittering in the ivy outside; oxen were lowing to each other
across the park. Morning, with all her music, was abroad.

I started up in bed and rubbed my eyes. Within the house everything was
as mute as the grave. That horrible tramping overhead had ceased--had
ceased, doubtless, with the return of daylight, which would otherwise
have shifted it from the region of the we