ou go into the gallery, Hann
a-clutching hold of me and starting, which when we come into the
gallery I was all of a tremble, and she shook so I said, 'La! Hann, for
goodness' sake do carry that candle straight, or you will grease the
carpet shameful;' and come to the pink room I says, 'Open the door.'
'La!' says she, 'what if we was to see the ghost?' 'Hold your silly
nonsense this minute,' I says, 'and open the door,' which she do, but
stand right back for to let me go first, when, true as ever I am
standing here, my lady, I see something white go by like a flash, and
struck me cold in the face, and blew the candle out, and then come the
fearfullest noise, which thunderclaps is nothing to it. Hann began
a-screaming, and we ran as fast as ever we could till we come to the
pantry, where Mr. Castleman and the footman was. I thought I should ha'
died: died I thought I should. My face was as white as that
antimacassar."

"How could you see your face, Mrs. Mallet?" somewhat peevishly objected
Lady Atherley.

But Mrs. Mallet with great dignity retorted--

"Which I looked down my nose, and it were like a corpse's."

"Very alarming," said Atherley, "but easily explained. Directly you
opened the door there was, of course, a draught from the open window.
That draught blew the candle out and knocked something over, probably a
screen."

"La' bless you, Sir George, it was more like paving-stones than screens
a-falling."

And indeed Mrs. Mallet was so far right, that when, to settle the
weighty question once for all, we adjourned in a body to the pink
bedroom, we discovered that nothing less than the ceiling, or at least a
portion of it, had fallen, and was lying in a heap of broken plaster
upon the floor. However, the moral, as Atherley hastened to observe, was
the same.

"You see, Mrs. Mallet, this was what made the noise."

Mrs. Mallet made no reply, but it was evident she neither saw nor
intended to see anything of the kind; and Atherley wisely substituted
bribery for reasoning. But even with this he made little way till
accidentally he mentioned the name of Mrs. de Noel, when, as if it had
been a name to conjure by, Mrs. Mallet showed signs of softening.

"Yes, think of Mrs. de Noel, Mrs. Mallet; what will she say if you leave
her cousin to starve?"

"I should not wish such a thing to happen for a moment," said Mrs.
Mallet, as if this had been no figure of speech but the actual
alternative, "not to any relation of