While this intercourse was going on, and Mr. Everard became more and more the associate of the ladies, the little shock that had been given them by the result of Johnny’s excitement on the night of the accident grew into something definite and rather alarming. Johnny was not ill—so far as appeared, he was not even frightened; but he continued to see “the lady” from time to time, and more than once a cry from the room in which he slept had summoned Rosalind, and even Mrs. Lennox, forgetful of her rheumatism. On these occasions Johnny would be found sitting up in his bed, his great eyes like two lamps, shining even in the dim glow of the night-light. It was at an hour when he should have been asleep, when nurse had gone to her supper, and to that needful relaxation which nurses as well as other mortals require. The child was not frightened, but there was a certain excitement about this periodical awakening. “The lady! the lady!” he said. “Oh, my darling,” cried Aunt Sophy, trembling; “what lady? There could be no lady. You have been dreaming. Go to sleep, Johnny, and think of it no more.”

“I sawed her,” cried the child. He pushed away Mrs. Lennox and clung to Rosalind, who had her arms round him holding him fast. “I never was asleep at all, Rosy; I just closed my eyes, and then I opened them and I sawed the lady.”

“Oh, Rosalind, he has just been dreaming. Oh, Johnny dear, that is all nonsense; there was no lady!” Aunt Sophy cried.

“Tell me about her,” said Rosalind. “Was it a strange lady? Did you know who she was?”

“It is just the lady,” cried Johnny, impatiently. “I told you before. She is much more taller than Aunt Sophy, with a black thing over her head. She wouldn’t stay, because you came running, and she didn’t want you. But I want the lady to speak to me— I want her to speak to me. Go away, Rosy!” the little fellow cried.

“Dear, the lady will not come back again to-night. Tell me about her. Johnny, did you know who she was?”

“I told you: she’s just the lady,” cried Johnny, with the air of one whose explanation leaves nothing to be desired.

“Oh, Rosalind, you are just encouraging him in his nonsense. He was dreaming. My darling, you were dreaming. Nurse, here is this little boy been dreaming again about the lady, as he calls her. You must give him a dose. He must have got his little digestion all wrong. It can be nothing but that, you know,” Aunt Sophy said. She drew the nurse, who had hastened up from her hour’s relaxation in alarm, with her into the outer room. Mrs. Lennox herself was trembling. She clutched the woman’s arm with a nervous grasp. “What does he mean about this lady? Is there any story about a lady? I am quite sure it is all nonsense, or that it is just a dream,” said Mrs. Lennox, with a nervous flutter in the bow of her cap. “Is there any story (though it is all nonsense) of a haunted room or anything of that sort? If there is, I sha’n’t stay here, not another day.”

The nurse, however, had heard no such story: she stood whispering with her mistress, talking over this strange occurrence, while Rosalind soothed and quieted the excited child. Amy’s little bed was in the outer room, but all was still there, the child never stirring, so absolutely noiseless that her very presence was forgotten by the two anxious women comparing notes. “He always keeps to the same story,” said nurse. “I can’t tell what to make of it, ma’am, but Master Johnny always was a little strange.”

“What do you mean by a little strange? He is a dear child, he never gives any trouble, he is just a darling,” Aunt Sophy said. “It is his digestion that has got a little wrong. A shock like that of the other day—it sometimes will not tell for some time, and as often as not it puts their little stomachs wrong. A little medicine will set everything right.”

Nurse demurred to this, having notions of her own, and the discussion went on till Rosalind, who had persuaded Johnny to compose himself, and sat by him till he fell asleep, came out and joined them. “It will be better for you not to leave him without calling me or some one,” she said.

“Miss Rosalind!” cried nurse, with natural desperation, “children is dreadfully tiring to have them all day long, and every day. And nurses is only flesh and blood like other people. If I’m never to have a moment’s rest, day nor night, I think I shall go off my head.”

All this went on in the room where little Amy lay asleep. She was so still that she was not considered at all. She was, indeed, at all times so little disposed to produce herself or make any call upon the attention of those about her, that the family, as is general, took poor little Amy at her own showing and left her to herself. It did not even seem anything remarkable that she was so still—and nobody perceived the pair of wide-open eyes with which she watched all that was going on under the corner of the coverlet. Even Rosalind scarcely looked towards her little sister’s bed, and all the pent-up misery and terror which a child can conceal (and how much that implies) lay unconsoled and unlightened in poor little Amy’s breast. Meanwhile Johnny had fallen fast asleep, untroubled by any further thought of the apparition which only he was supposed to have seen.

This brought a great deal of trouble into the minds of Johnny’s guardians. Mrs. Lennox was so nearly breaking down under a sense of the responsibility that her rheumatism, instead of improving with her baths, grew worse than ever, and she became so stiff that Rosalind and Everard together were needed, each at one arm, to raise her from her chair. The doctor was sent for, who examined Johnny, and, after hearing all the story, concluded that it was suppressed gout in the child’s system, and that baths to bring it out would be the best cure. He questioned Mrs. Lennox so closely as to her family and all their antecedents that it very soon appeared a certain fact that all the Trevanions had suffered from suppressed gout, which explained everything, and especially all peculiarities in the mind or conduct. “The little boy,” said the doctor, who spoke English so well, “is the victim of the physiological sins of his forefathers. Pardon, madam; I do not speak in a moral point of view. They drank Oporto wine and he sees what you call ghosts; the succession is very apparent. This child,” turning to Amy, who stood by, “she also has suppressed gout.”

“Oh, Amy is quite well,” cried Aunt Sophy; “there is nothing at all the matter with Amy. But it cannot be denied that there is gout in the family. Indeed, when gentlemen come to a certain age they always suffer in that way, though I am sure I don’t know why. My poor father and grandfather, too, as I have always heard. Your papa, Rosalind, with him it was the heart.”

“They are all connected. Rheumatism, it is the brother of gout, and rheumatism is the tyrant which affects the heart. No, my dear young lady, it is not the emotions, nor love, nor disappointment, nor any of the pretty things you think; it is rheumatism that is most fatal for the heart. I will settle for the little boy a course of baths, and he will see no more ladies; that is,” said the doctor, with a wave of his hand, “except the very charming ladies whom he has a right to see. But this child, she has it more pronounced; she is more ill than the little boy.”

“Oh, no, doctor, it is only that Amy is always pale; there is nothing the matter with her. Do you feel anything the matter with you, Amy, my dear?”

“No, Aunt Sophy,” said the little girl in a very low voice, turning her head away.

“I told you so; there is nothing the matter with her. She is a pale little thing. She never has any color. But Johnny! Doctor, oh, I hope you will do your best for Johnny! He quite destroys all our peace and comfort. I am afraid to open my eyes after I go to bed, lest I should see the lady too; for that sort of thing is very catching. You get it into your mind. If there is any noise I can’t account for, I feel disposed to scream. I am sure I shall be seeing it before long if Johnny gets no better. But I have always supposed in such cases that it was the digestion that was out of order,” Mrs. Lennox said, returning, but doubtfully, to her original view.

“It is all the same thing,” said the doctor, cheerfully waving his hand; and then he patted Johnny on the head, who was half overawed, half pleased, to have an illness which procured unlimited petting without any pain. The little fellow began his baths immediately, but next night he saw the lady again. This time he woke and found her bending over him, and gave forth the cry which was now so well known by all the party. Mrs. Lennox, who rushed into the room the first, being in her own chamber, which was near Johnny’s, had to be led back to the sitting-room in a state of nervous prostration, trembling and sobbing. When she was placed in her chair and a glass of wine administered to her, she declared that she had seen it too. “Oh, how can you ask me what it was? I saw something move. Do you think,” with a gasp, “Rosalind, that one can keep one’s wits about one, with all that going on? I am sure I saw something—something black go out of the door—or at least something moved. The curtain? oh, how can you say it was the curtain? I never thought of that. Are you sure you didn’t see anything, Rosalind?”

“I saw the wind in the curtain, Aunt Sophy: the window was open, and it blew out and almost frightened me too.”

“Oh, I could not say I was frightened,” said Mrs. Lennox, grasping Rosalind’s hand tight. “A curtain does bulge out with the wind, doesn’t it? I never thought of that. I saw something—move—I—wasn’t frightened, only a little nervous. Perhaps it was—the wind in the curtain. You are sure you were frightened too.”

“It blew right out upon me, like some one coming to meet me.”

Aunt Sophy grasped Rosalind’s hand tight. “It must have some explanation,” she said. “It couldn’t be anything super— You don’t believe in—that sort of thing, Rosalind?”

“Dear Aunt Sophy, I am sure it was the curtain. I saw it too. I would not say so if I did not feel—sure—”

“Oh, my dear, what a comfort it is to have a cool head like yours. You’re not carried away by your feelings like me. I’m so sympathetic, I feel as other people feel; to hear Johnny cry just made me I can’t tell how. It was dreadfully like some one moving, Rosalind.”

“Yes, Aunt Sophy. When the wind got into the folds, it was exactly like some one moving.”

“You are sure it was the curtain, Rosalind.”

Poor Rosalind was as little sure as any imaginative girl could be; she, too, was very much shaken by Johnny’s vision; at her age it is so much more easy to believe in the supernatural than in spectral illusions or derangement of the digestion. She did not believe that the stomach was the source of fancy, or that imagination only meant a form of suppressed gout. Her nerves were greatly disturbed, and she was as ready to see anything, if seeing depended upon an excited condition, as any young and impressionable person ever was. She was glad to soothe Mrs. Lennox with an easy explanation. But Rosalind did not believe that it was the curtain which had deceived Johnny. Neither did she believe in the baths, or in the suppressed gout. She was convinced in her mind that the child spoke the truth, and that it was some visitor from the unseen who came to him. But who was it? Dark fears crossed her mind, and many a wistful wonder. There were no family warnings among the Trevanions, or it is to be feared that reason would have yielded in Rosalind’s mind to nature and faith. As it was, her heart grew feverish and expectant. The arrival of the letters from England every morning filled her with terror. She dreaded to see a black-bordered envelope, a messenger of death.