with the Atherleys. Mrs. Mallet was a brunette who might
once have considered herself a beauty, to judge by the self-conscious
and self-satisfied simper which the ghastliest recollections were unable
to banish. As I entered I caught only the last words of Atherley's
speech--

"---- treating you well, Mrs. Mallet?"

"Oh no, Sir George," answered Mrs. Mallet, standing very straight and
stiff, with two plump red hands folded demurely before her; "which I
have not a word to say against any one, but have met, ever since I come
here, with the greatest of kindness and respect. But the noises, sir,
the noises of a night is more than I can abear."

"Oh, they are only rats, Mrs. Mallet."

"No rats in this world ever made sech a noise, Sir George; which the
very first night as I slep here, there come the most mysterioustest
sounds as ever I hear, which I says to Hann, 'Whatever are you a-doing?'
which she woke up all of a suddent, as young people will, and said she
never hear nor yet see nothing."

"What was the noise like, Mrs. Mallet?"

"Well, Sir George, I can only compare it to the dragging of heavy
furniture, which I really thought at first it was her ladyship a-coming
upstairs to waken me, took bad with burglars or a fire."

"But, Mrs. Mallet, I am sure you are too brave a woman to mind a little
noise."

"It is not only noises, Sir George. Last night--"

Mrs. Mallet drew a long breath and closed her eyes.

"Yes, Mrs. Mallet, pray go on; I am very curious to hear what did happen
last night."

"It makes the cold chills run over me to think of it. We was all gone to
bed--leastways the maids and me, and Hann and me was but just got to my
room when says she to me, 'Oh la! whatever do you think?' says she; 'I
promised Ellen when she went out this afternoon as I would shut the
windows in the pink bedroom at four o'clock, and never come to think of
it till this minute,' she says. 'Oh dear,' I says, 'and them new
chintzes will be entirely ruined with the damp. Why, what a
good-for-nothing girl you are!' I says, 'and what you thinks on half
your time is more than I can tell.' 'Whatever shall I do?' she says,
'for go along there at this time of night all by myself I dare not,'
says she. 'Well,' I says, 'rather than you should go alone, I'll go
along with you,' I says, 'for stay here by myself I would not,' I says,
'not if any one was to pay me hundreds.' So we went down our stairs and
along our passage to the door which y