“She goes and sits in that room—! Oh, no, it’s too dreadful, I shall speak to my brother about it tonight. We’ll have to leave here at once, even if it means breaking the lease, though I should think in the circumstances the family would hardly care to make an issue of it! I— I’ve never lived in a haunted house before!”

“You can’t be sure of that, can you?” The housekeeper stooped and retrieved Aunt Effie’s needlework from the floor. “Most old houses are haunted, one way or another.”

“I—I must speak to my brother—”

“If I might say so,” began Mrs. Pilton, and the quiet words were like a restraining hand on Aunt Effie’s arm, “you ought to think twice before you try to take Miss Sabrina right out of the house. It might be dangerous to interfere.”

“Dangerous to—!” That left Aunt Effie very nearly speechless. “I didn’t mind very much when she began to make a—a friend of a man she would probably never meet,” she floundered. “B-but now it’s as though she had—fallen in love with some sort of—ghost! You should have told me about this sooner! You should have warned me!”

“I thought the best way would be to pretend we didn’t notice anything at all.”

“But that’s impossible! It can’t go on! Where would it lead to?”

“She might outgrow it. Or he might go away. In any case, it isn’t a thing you can decide about.”

“I have already decided!” said Aunt Effie obstinately. “We shall leave the house at once. I shall speak to her father. We shall take her back to London as soon as possible.”

“I suppose you must do as you think best,” said Mrs. Pilton drily, and turned away as though dismissed. “Good-night.”

For a moment Aunt Effie stood looking at the door which had closed behind the housekeeper. Mrs. Pilton’s tacit acceptance of what was to Aunt Effie a terrifying and unnatural situation hung like an echo in the room.

Aunt Effie still could not quite believe her ears. It was bad enough to feel that the house was inhabited by something—unearthly. But that Sabrina should be determined to—to hobnob with the—the ....

Aunt Effie marched with resolute footsteps across the hall and tapped on her brother’s study door.

“Alan, I must speak to you.”

He looked up at her over his spectacles, his pen poised hopefully. But he saw no reprieve in her face and resigned himself with a polite sigh.

“Yes, Effie—what is it now?”

She came in and sat down on the edge of the chair at the end of the desk, facing him, her hands pressed tight together in her lap.

“Alan—I’ve just had the fright of my life.”

“Been seeing things again?” he inquired, with his untimely facetiousness.