I sat
at breakfast the sunlight flooded in through the high mullioned windows,
throwing watery patches of colour from the coats of arms which covered
them. The dark panelling glowed like bronze in the golden rays, and it
was hard to realize that this was indeed the chamber which had struck
such a gloom into our souls upon the evening before.

"I guess it is ourselves and not the house that we have to blame!" said
the baronet. "We were tired with our journey and chilled by our drive,
so we took a gray view of the place. Now we are fresh and well, so it is
all cheerful once more."

"And yet it was not entirely a question of imagination," I answered.
"Did you, for example, happen to hear someone, a woman I think, sobbing
in the night?"

"That is curious, for I did when I was half asleep fancy that I heard
something of the sort. I waited quite a time, but there was no more of
it, so I concluded that it was all a dream."

"I heard it distinctly, and I am sure that it was really the sob of a
woman."

"We must ask about this right away." He rang the bell and asked
Barrymore whether he could account for our experience. It seemed to me
that the pallid features of the butler turned a shade paler still as he
listened to his master's question.

"There are only two women in the house, Sir Henry," he answered. "One is
the scullery-maid, who sleeps in the other wing. The other is my wife,
and I can answer for it that the sound could not have come from her."

And yet he lied as he said it, for it chanced that after breakfast I met
Mrs. Barrymore in the long corridor with the sun full upon her face. She
was a large, impassive, heavy-featured woman with a stern set expression
of mouth. But her telltale eyes were red and glanced at me from between
swollen lids. It was she, then, who wept in the night, and if she did so
her husband must know it. Yet he had taken the obvious risk of discovery
in declaring that it was not so. Why had he done this? And why did she
weep so bitterly? Already round this pale-faced, handsome, black-bearded
man there was gathering an atmosphere of mystery and of gloom. It was he
who had been the first to discover the body of Sir Charles, and we had
only his word for all the circumstances which led up to the old man's
death. Was it possible that it was Barrymore, after all, whom we had
seen in the cab in Regent Street? The beard might well have been the
same. The cabman had described a somewhat shorter man,