across his face; but it vanished the instant
she took his hand again, to lead him back to
his seat. He drew her to him gently, and
kissed her cheek. "You are right, Rosamond,"
he said. "The one faithful friend to
me in my blindness who never fails, is my
wife."

Seeing him look a little saddened, and
feeling, with the quick intuition of a woman's
affection, that he was thinking of the days
when he had enjoyed the blessing of sight,
Rosamond returned abruptly, as soon as she
saw him seated once more on the ottoman, to
the subject of the Myrtle Room.

"Where shall I look next, dear?" she said.
"The bookcase we have examined. The
writing-table we must wait to examine.
What else is there, that has a cupboard or a
drawer in it?" She looked round her in
perplexity: then walked away towards the
part of the room to which her attention had
been last drawn—the part where the fire-
place was situated.

"I thought I noticed something here,
Lenny, when I passed just now with you,"
she said, approaching the second recess
behind the mantelpiece, corresponding with
the recess in which the writing-table
stood.

She looked into the place closely, and
detected in a corner, darkened by the shadow
of the heavy projecting mantelpiece, a
narrow, ricketty little table, made of the
commonest mahogany—the frailest, poorest, least
conspicuous piece of furniture in the whole
room. She pushed it out contemptuously into
the light with her foot. It ran on clumsy
old-fashioned castors, and creaked wearily as
it moved.

"Lenny, I have found another table," said
Rosamond. "A miserable, forlorn-looking
little thing, lost in a corner. I have just
pushed it into the light, and I have discovered
one drawer in it." She paused, and tried to
open the drawer; but it resisted her.
"Another lock!" she exclaimed impatiently.
"Even this wretched thing is closed against
us!"

She pushed the table sharply away with
her hand. It swayed on its frail legs,
tottered, and fell over on the floor—fell as
heavily as a table of twice its size—fell with
a shock that rang through the room, and
repeated itself again and again in the echoes
of the lonesome north hall.

Rosamond ran to her husband, seeing him
start from his seat in alarm, and told him
what had happened. "You called it a little
table," he replied, in astonishment. "It fell
like one of the largest pieces of furniture in
the room!"

"Surely there must have been something
heavy in the drawer!" said Rosamond,
approaching the table with her spirits still
fluttered by the shock of its unnaturally
heavy fall. After waiting for a few moments
to give the dust which it had raised, and
which still hung over it in thick lazy clouds,
time to disperse, she stooped down and
examined it. It was cracked across the top
from end to end, and the lock had been
broken away from its fastenings by the fall.

She set the table up again carefully, drew
out the drawer, and, after a glance at its
contents, turned to her husband. "I knew
it," she said. "I knew there must have been
something heavy in the drawer. It is full of
pieces of copper-ore, like those specimens of
my father's, Lenny, from Porthgenna mine?
Wait! I think I feel something else, as far
away at the back here as my hand can
reach."

She extricated from the lumps of ore at
the back of the drawer, a small circular
picture-frame of black wood, about the size
of an ordinary hand-glass. It came out with
the front part downwards, and with the area
which its circle inclosed filled up by a thin
piece of wood, of the sort which is used at
the backs of small frames to keep drawings
and engravings steady in them. This piece
of wood (only secured to the back of the
frame by one nail) had been forced out of
its place, probably by the overthrow of the
table; and when Rosamond took the frame
out of the drawer, she observed between it
and the dislodged piece of wood, the end of
a morsel of paper, apparently folded many
times over, so as to occupy the smallest
possible space. She drew out the piece of paper,
laid it aside on the table without unfolding
it, replaced the piece of wood in its proper
position, and then turned the frame round,
to see if there was a picture in front.

There was a picture—a picture painted in
oils, darkened, but not much faded, by age.
It represented the head of a woman, and the
figure, as far as the bosom.

The instant Rosamond's eyes fell on it, she
shuddered, and hurriedly advanced towards
her husband with the picture in her hand.

"Well, what have you found, now?" he
enquired, hearing her approach.

"A picture," she answered faintly, stopping
to look at it again.

Leonard's sensitive ear detected a change
in her voice. "Is there anything that alarms
you in the picture?" he asked, half in jest,
half in earnest.

"There is something that startles me—
something that seems to have turned me cold,
for the moment, hot as the day is," said
Rosamond. "Do you remember the description
the servant-girl gave us, on the night
when we arrived here, of the ghost of the
north rooms?"

"Yes, I remember it perfectly."

"Lenny! that description and this picture
are exactly alike! Here is the curling light-
brown hair. Here is the dimple on each
cheek. Here are the bright regular teeth.
Here is that leering, wicked, fatal beauty
which the girl tried to describe, and did
describe, when she said it was awful!"