The Hotel Venat that night closed its doors upon many anxious and troubled souls. A certain agitation seemed to have crept through the house itself. The landlady was disturbed in her bureau, moving about restlessly, giving short answers to the many inquirers who came to know what was the matter. “What is there, do you ask?” she said, stretching out her plump hands, “there is nothing! there is that mademoiselle, the young Anglaise, has an attaque des nerfs. Nothing could be more simple. The reason I know not. Is it necessary to inquire? An affair of the heart! Les Anglaises have two or three in a year. Mademoiselle has had a disappointment. The uncle has come to interfere, and she has a seizure. I do not blame her; it is the weapon of a young girl. What has she else, pauvre petite, to avenge herself?”

“But, madame, they say that something has been seen—a ghost, a—”

“There are no ghosts in my house,” the indignant landlady said; and her tone was so imperious and her brow so lowering that the timid questioners scattered in all directions. The English visitors were not quite sure what an attaque des nerfs was. It was not a “nervous attack;” it was something not to be defined by English terms. English ladies do not have hysterics nowadays; they have neuralgia, which answers something of the same purpose, but then neuralgia has no sort of connection with ghosts.

In Mrs. Lennox’s sitting-room up-stairs, which was so well lighted, so fully occupied, with large windows opening upon the garden, and white curtains fluttering at the open windows, a very agitated group was assembled. Mrs. Lennox was seated at a distance from the table, with her white handkerchief in her hand, with which now and then she wiped off a few tears. Sometimes she would throw a word into the conversation that was going on, but for the most part confined herself to passive remonstrances and appeals, lifting up now her hands, now her eyes, to heaven. It was half because she was so overcome by her feelings that Mrs. Lennox took so little share in what was going on, and half because her brother had taken the management of this crisis off her hands. She did not think that he showed much mastery of the situation, but she yielded it to him with a great and consolatory consciousness that, whatever should now happen, she could not be held as the person to blame.

Rosalind’s story was that which the reader already knows, with the addition of another extracted from little Amy, who had one of those wonderful tales of childish endurance and silence which seem scarcely credible, yet occur so often, to tell. For many nights past, Amy, clinging to her sister, with her face hidden on Rosalind’s shoulder, declared that she had seen the same figure steal in. She had never clearly seen the face, but the child had been certain from the first that it was mamma. Mamma had gone to Johnny first, and then had come to her own little bed, where she stood for a moment before she disappeared. Johnny’s outcry had been always, Amy said, after the figure disappeared, but she had seen it emerge from out of the dimness, and glide away, and by degrees this mystery had become the chief incident in her life. All this Rosalind repeated with tremulous eloquence; and excitement, as she stood before the two elder people, on her defence.

“But I saw her, Uncle John; what argument can be so strong as that? You have been moving about, you have not got your letters; and perhaps—perhaps—” cried Rosalind with tears—“perhaps it has happened only now, only to-night. A woman who was far from her children might come and see them—and see them,” she struggled to say through her sobs, “on her way to heaven.”

“Oh, Rosalind! it is a fortnight since it begun,” Mrs. Lennox said.

“Do people die in a moment?” cried Rosalind. “She may have been dying all this time; and perhaps when they thought her wandering in her mind it might be that she was here. Oh, my mother; who would watch over her, who would be taking care of her? and me so far away!”

John Trevanion sprang from his chair. It was intolerable to sit there and listen and feel the contagion of this excitement, which was so irrational, so foolish, gain his own being. Women take a pleasure in their own anguish, which a man cannot bear. “Rosalind,” he cried, “this is too terrible, you know. I cannot stand it if you can; I tell you, if anything had happened, I must have heard. All this is simply impossible. You have all got out of order, the children first, and their fancies have acted upon you.”

“It is their digestion, I always said so—or gout in the system,” said Aunt Sophy, lifting her handkerchief to her eyes.

“It is derangement of the brain, I think,” said John. “I see I must get you out of here; one of you has infected the other. Come, Rosalind, you have so much sense—let us see you make use of it.”

“Uncle John, what has sense to do with it? I have seen her,” Rosalind said.

“This is madness, Rosalind.”

“What is madness? Are my eyes mad that saw mamma? I was not thinking of seeing her. In a moment I lifted up my eyes, and she was there. Is it madness that she should die? Oh no, more wonderful how she can live; or madness to think that her heart would fly to us—oh, like an arrow, the moment it was free?”

“Rosalind,” said Mrs. Lennox, “poor Grace was a very religious woman; at that moment she would be thinking about her Maker.”

“Do you think she would be afraid of him?” cried Rosalind, “afraid that our Lord would be jealous, that he would not like her to love her children? Oh, that’s not what my mother thought! My religion is what I got from her. She was not afraid of him—she loved him. She would know that he would let her come, perhaps bring her and stand by her; perhaps,” the girl cried, clasping her hands, “if I had been better, more religious, more like my mother, I should have seen him in the room too.”

John Trevanion seized her hands almost fiercely. Short of giving up his own self-control, and yielding to this stormy tide of emotion, it was the only thing he could do. “I must have an end of this,” he said. “Rosalind, you must be calm—we shall all go distracted if you continue so. She was a good woman, as Sophy says. She never could, I don’t believe it, have gratified herself at your expense like this. I shall telegraph the first thing in the morning to the lawyers, to know if they have any news. Will that satisfy you? Suspend your judgment till I hear; if then it turns out that there is any cause—” Here his voice broke and yielded to the strain of emotion; upon which Rosalind, whose face had been turned away, rose up suddenly and flung herself upon him as Amy had done upon her, crying, “Oh, my mother! oh, my mother! you loved her too, Uncle John.”

Thus the passion of excited feeling extended itself. For a moment John Trevanion sobbed too, and the girl felt, with a sensation of awe which calmed her, the swelling of the man’s breast. He put her down in her chair next moment with a tremulous smile. “No more, Rosalind—we must not all lose our senses. I promise you if there is any truth in your imagination you shall not want my sympathy. But I am sure you are exciting yourself unnecessarily; I know I should have heard had there been anything wrong. My dear, no more now.”

Next morning John Trevanion was early astir. He had slept little, and his mind was full of cares. In the light of the morning he felt a little ashamed of the agitation of last night, and of the credulity to which he himself had been drawn by Rosalind’s excitement. He said to himself that no doubt it was in the imagination of little Amy that the whole myth had arisen. The child had been sleepless, as children often are, and no doubt she had formed to herself that spectre out of the darkness which sympathy and excitement and solitude had embodied to Rosalind also. Nothing is more contagious than imagination. He had himself been all but overpowered by Rosalind’s impassioned certainty. He had felt his own firmness waver; how much more was an emotional girl likely to waver, who did not take into account the tangle of mental workings even in a child? As he came out into the cool morning air it all seemed clear enough and easy; but the consequences were not easy, nor how he was to break the spell, and recall the visionary child and the too sympathetic girl to practical realities, and dissipate these fancies out of their heads. He was not very confident in his own powers; he thought they were quite as likely to overcome him as he to restore them to composure. But still something must be done, and the scene changed at least. As he came along the corridor from his room, with a sense of being the only person waking in this part of the house, though the servants had long been stirring below, his ear was caught by a faint, quick sound, and a whispering call from the apartment occupied by his sister. He looked round quickly, fearful, as one is in a time of agitation, of every new sound, and saw another actor in the little drama, one whose name had not yet been so much as mentioned as taking any part in it—the sharp, inquisitive, matter-of-fact little Sophy, who was the one of the children he liked least. Sophy made energetic gestures to stop him, and with elaborate precaution came out of her room attired in a little dressing-gown of blue flannel, with bare feet in slippers, and her hair hanging over her shoulders. He stood still in the passage with great impatience while she elaborately closed the door behind her, and came towards him on her toes, with an evident enjoyment of the mystery. “Oh, Uncle John! hush, don’t make any noise,” Sophy said.

“Is that all you want to tell me?” he asked severely.

“No, Uncle John; but we must not wake these poor things, they are all asleep. I want to tell you—do you think we are safe here and nobody can hear us? Please go back to your room. If any one were to come and see me, in bare feet and my dressing-gown—”

He laughed somewhat grimly, indeed with a feeling that he would like to whip this important little person; but Sophy detected no under-current of meaning. She cried “Hush!” again, with the most imperative energy, under her breath, and swinging by his arm drew him back to his room, which threw a ray of morning sunshine down the passage from its open door. The man was a little abashed by the entrance of this feminine creature, though she was but thirteen, especially as she gave a quick glance round of curiosity and sharp inspection. “What an awfully big sponge, and what a lot of boots you have!” she said quickly. “Uncle John! they say one ought never to watch or listen or anything of that sort; but when everybody was in such a state last night, how do you think I could just stay still in bed? I saw that lady come out of the children’s room, Uncle John.”

The child, though her eyes were dancing with excitement and the delight of meddling, and the importance of what she had to say, began at this point to change color, to grow red and then pale.

“You! I did not think you were the sort of person, Sophy—”

“Oh, wait a little, Uncle John! To see ghosts you were going to say. But that is just the mistake. I knew all the time it was a real lady. I don’t know how I knew. I just found out, out of my own head.”

“A real lady! I don’t know, Sophy, what you mean.”

“Oh, but you do, it is quite simple. It is no ghost, it is a real lady, as real as any one. I stood at the door and saw her come out. She went quite close past me, and I felt her things, and they were as real as mine. She makes no noise because she is so light and thin. Besides, there are no ghosts,” said Sophy. “If she had been a ghost she would have known I was there, and she never did, never found me out though I felt her things. She had a great deal of black lace on,” the girl added, not without meaning, though it was a meaning altogether lost upon John Trevanion. Though she was so cool and practical, her nerves were all in commotion. She could not keep still; her eyes, her feet, her fingers, all were quivering. She made a dart aside to his dressing-table. “What big, big brushes—and no handles to them! Why is everything a gentleman has so big? though you have so little hair. Her shoes were of that soft kind without any heels to them, and she made no noise. Uncle John!”

“This is a very strange addition to the story, Sophy. I am obliged to you for telling me. It was no imagination, then, but somebody, who for some strange motive— I am very glad you had so much sense, not to be deceived.”

“Uncle John!” Sophy said. She did not take any notice of this applause, as in other circumstances she would have done; everything about her twitched and trembled, her eyes seemed to grow large like Amy’s. She could not stand still. “Uncle John!”

“What is it, Sophy? You have something more to say.”

The child’s eyes filled with tears. So sharp they were, and keen, that this liquid medium seemed inappropriate to their eager curiosity and brightness. She grew quite pale, her lips quivered a little. “Uncle John!” she said again, with an hysterical heave of her bosom, “I think it is mamma.”

“Sophy!” He cried out with such a wildness of exclamation that she started with fright, and those hot tears dropped out of her eyes. Something in her throat choked her. She repeated, in a stifled, broken voice, “I am sure it is mamma.”

“Sophy! you must have some reason for saying this. What is it? Don’t tell me half, but everything. What makes you think—?”

“Oh, I don’t think at all,” cried the child. “Why should I think? I saw her. I would not tell the others or say anything, because it would harm us all, wouldn’t it, Uncle John? but I know it is mamma.”

He seized her by the shoulder in hot anger and excitement. “You little—! Could you think of that when you saw your mother—if it is your mother? but that’s impossible. And you can’t be such a little—such a demon as you make yourself out.”

“You never said that to any one else,” cried Sophy, bursting into tears; “it was Rex that told me. He said we should lose all our money if mamma came back. We can’t live without our money, can we, Uncle John? Other people may take care of us, and—all that. But if we had no money what would become of us? Rex told me. He said that was why mamma went away.”

John Trevanion gazed at the little girl in her precocious wisdom with a wonder for which he could find no words. Rex, too, that fresh and manly boy, so admirable an example of English youth; to think of these two young creatures talking it over, coming to their decision! He forgot even the strange light, if it were a light, which she had thrown upon the events of the previous evening, in admiration and wonder at this, which was more wonderful. At length he said, with perhaps a tone of satire too fine for Sophy, “As you are the only person who possesses this information, Sophy, what do you propose to do?”

“Do?” she said, looking at him with startled eyes; “I am not going to do anything, Uncle John. I thought I would tell you—”

“And put the responsibility on my shoulders? Yes, I understand that. But you cannot forget what you have seen. If your mother, as you think, is in the house, what shall you do?”

“Oh, Uncle John,” said Sophy, pale with alarm. “I have not really, really seen her, if that is what you mean. She only just passed where I was standing. No one could punish me just for having seen her pass.”

“I think you are a great philosopher, my dear,” he said.

At this, Sophy looked very keenly at him, and deriving no satisfaction from the expression of his face, again began to cry. “You are making fun of me, Uncle John,” she said. “You would not laugh like that if it had been Rosalind. You always laugh at us children whatever we may say.”

“I have no wish to laugh, Sophy, I assure you. If your aunt or some one wakes and finds you gone from your bed, how shall you explain it?”

“Oh, I shall tell her that I was— I know what I shall tell her,” Sophy said, recovering herself; “I am not such a silly as that.”

“You are not silly at all, my dear. I wish you were not half so clever,” said John. He turned away with a sick heart. Sophy and those unconscious, terrible revelations of hers were more than the man could bear. The air was fresh outside, the day was young; he seemed to have come out of an oppressive atmosphere of age and sophistication, calculating prudence and artificial life, when he left the child behind him. He was so much overwhelmed by Sophy that for the moment, he did not fully realize the importance of what she had told him, and it was not till he had walked some distance, and reconciled himself to nature in the still brightness of the morning, that he awoke with a sudden sensation which thrilled through and through him to the meaning of what the little girl had said. Her mother—was it possible? no ghost, but a living woman. This was indeed a solution of the problem which he had never thought of. At first, after Madam’s sudden departure from Highcourt, John Trevanion went nowhere without a sort of vague expectation of meeting her suddenly, in some quite inappropriate place—on a railway, in a hotel. But now, after years had passed, he had no longer that expectation. The world is so small, as it is the common vulgarity of the moment to say, but nevertheless the world is large enough to permit people who have lost each other in life to drift apart, never to meet, to wander about almost within sight of each other, yet never cross each other’s paths. He had not thought of that—he could scarcely give any faith to it now. It seemed too natural, too probable to have happened. And yet it was not either natural or probable that Mrs. Trevanion, such as he had known her, a woman so self-restrained, so long experienced in the act of subduing her own impulses, should risk the health of her children and shatter their nerves by secret visits that looked like those of a supernatural being. It was impossible to him to think this of her. She who had not hesitated to sacrifice herself entirely to their interests once, would she be so forgetful now? And yet, a mother hungering for the sight of her children’s faces, severed from them, without hope, was she to be judged by ordinary rules? Was there any expedient which she might not be pardoned for taking—any effort which she might not make to see them once more?

The immediate question, however, was what to do. He could not insist upon carrying the party away, which was his first idea; for various visitors were already on their way to join them, and it would be cruel to interrupt the “koor” which Mrs. Lennox regarded with so much hope. The anxious guardian did as so many anxious guardians have done before—he took refuge in a compromise. Before he returned to the hotel he had hired one of the many villas in the neighborhood, the white board with the inscription À louer coming to him like a sudden inspiration. Whether the appearance which had disturbed them was of this world or of another, the change must be beneficial.

The house stood upon a wooded height, which descended with its fringe of trees to the very edge of the water, and commanded the whole beautiful landscape, the expanse of the lake answering to every change of the sky, the homely towers of Hautecombe opposite, the mountains on either side, reflected in the profound blue mirror underneath. Within this enclosure no one could make a mysterious entry; no one, at least, clothed in ordinary flesh and blood. To his bewildered mind it was the most grateful relief to escape thus from the dilemma before him; and in any case he must gain time for examination and thought.