the billiard-table re-covered that you may have exercise on rainy days; and if we cannot give you much society, we will do all else to prevent your feeling dull."

"I shall be very happy here with you, dear Lucy," I said; "but you tell me so much of the dulness of Fernwood, while, I dare say, you yourself have a hundred associations that make the old place very dear to you."

She looked down as I spoke, and a very faint flush broke through the sallow paleness of her complexion.

"I am not very fond of Fernwood," she said gravely.

It was at Fernwood, then, that the great sorrow of her life came upon her, I thought.

"No, Lucy," said Laurence almost impatiently, "every body knows this dull place is killing you by inches, and yet nothing on earth can induce you to quit it. When we all go to Scarborough or Burlington, when mamma goes to Harrogate, when I run up to Town to rub off my provin cial rust, and see what the world is made of outside these dreary gates, -you obstinately persist in staying at home; and the only reason you can urge for doing so is, that you must remain here to take care of that unfortunate invalid of yours, Mr. Thomas."

I was holding Lucy's hand in mine, and I felt the poor wasted little fingers tremble as her brother spoke. My curiosity was strongly aroused. "Mr. Thomas !" I exclaimed, half involuntarily.

"Ah, to be sure, Bella, I forgot to tell you of that member of our household, but as I have never seen him, I may be forgiven the omission. This Mr. Thomas is a poor relative of my father's: a hopeless invalid, bedridden, I believe,-is he not, Lucy?-who requires a strong man and an experienced nurse to look after him, and who occupies the entire upper story of one wing of the house. Poor Mr. Thomas, invalid as he is, must certainly be a most fascinating person. My mother goes to see him every day, but as stealthily as if she were paying a secret visit to some condemned criminal. I have often met my father coming away from his rooms, pale and melancholy; and, as for my sister Lucy, she is so attached to this sick dependent of ours, that, as I have just said, nothing will induce her to leave the house, for fear his nurse or his valet should fail in their care of him."

I still held Lucy's hand, but it was perfectly steady now. Could this poor relative, this invalid dependent, have any part in the sorrowful mystery that had overshadowed her life? And yet, no; I thought that could scarcely be, for she looked up with such perfect self-possession as she answered her brother,

"My whole life has gradually fallen into the duty of attendance upon this poor young man, Laurence; and I will never leave Fernwood while he lives."

A young man! Mr. Thomas was a young man, then.

Lucy herself led my aunt and I to the handsome suite of apartments

prepared for us. Mrs. Trevor's room was separated from mine by a corridor, out of which opened two dressing-rooms and a pretty little boudoir, all looking on to the park. My room was at the extreme angle of the building; it had two doors, one leading to the corridor communicating with my aunt's apartments, the other opening into a gallery running the entire length of the house. Looking out into this gallery, I saw that the opposite wing was shut in by a baize door. I looked with some curiosity at this heavy baize door. It was most likely the barrier which closed the outer world upon Laurence Wendale's invalid relation.

Lucy left us as soon as she had installed my aunt and I in our apartments. While I was dressing for dinner, the housekeeper, a stout, elderly woman, came to ask me if I found every thing I required.

"As you haven't brought your own servant with you, miss," she said, Miss Lucy told me to place her maid Sarah entirely at your service. Miss gives very little work to a maid herself, so Sarah has plenty of leisure time on her hands, and you'll find her a very respectable young woman.” I told her that I could do all I wanted for myself; but before she left me I could not resist asking her one question about the mysterious invalid.

"Are Mr. Thomas's rooms at this end of the house?" I asked.

The woman looked at me with an almost scared expression, and was silent for a moment.

"Has Mr. Laurence been saying any thing to you about Mr. Thomas ?"" she said; rather anxiously, as I thought.

"Mr. Laurence and his sister Miss Lucy were both talking of him just now."

66 Oh, indeed, miss," answered the woman, with an air of relief; "the poor gentleman's rooms are at the other end of the gallery, miss.” "Has he lived here long?" I asked.

"Nigh upon twenty years, miss- above twenty years, I'm thinking."

"I suppose he is distantly related to the family."

"Yes, miss."

"And quite dependent on Mr. Wendale ?"

"Yes, miss."

"It is very good of your master to have supported him for so many years, and to keep him in such comfort."

"My master is a very good man, miss.”

The woman seemed determined to give me as little information as possible; but I could not resist one more question.

"How is it that in all these years Mr. Laurence has never seen this invalid relation?" I asked.

It seemed that this question, of all others, was the most embarrassing to the housekeeper. She turned first red and then pale, and said, in a very confused manner, "The poor gentleman never leaves his room, miss; and Mr. Laurence has such high spirits, bless his dear heart, and

has such a noisy, rackety way with him, that he's no fit company for an invalid."

It was evidently useless trying for further information, so I abandoned the attempt, and bidding the housekeeper good afternoon, began to dress my hair before the massive oak-framed looking-glass.

"The truth of the matter is," I said to myself, "that after all there is nothing more to be said about it. I have tried to create a mystery out of the simplest possible family arrangement. Mr. Wendale has a bedridden relative, too poor and too helpless to support himself. What more natural than that he should give him house-room in this dreary old mansion, where there seems space enough to lodge a regiment?"

I found the family assembled in the drawing-room. Mr. Wendale was the wreck of a very handsome man. He must in early life hav eresembled Laurence; but, as my lover had said, it seemed indeed as if he and the house and grounds of Fernwood had fallen into decay together. But notwithstanding his weak state of health, he gave us a warm welcome, and did the honours of his hospitable dinner-table with the easy grace of a finished gentleman.

After dinner, my aunt and Lady Adela sat at one of the windows talking; while Laurence, Lucy, and I gathered together upon a long stone terrace outside the drawing-room, watching the last low crimson streak of the August sunset fade out behind the black trunks of the trees, and melt away into faint red splashes upon the water-pools amongst the brushwood. We were very happy together; Laurence and I talking of a hundred different subjects, telling Lucy our London adventures, describing our fashionable friends, our drives and rides, fêtes, balls, and dinners; she, with a grave smile upon her lips, listening to us with almost maternal patience.

"I must take you over the old house to-morrow, Isabel," Laurence said, in the course of the evening. "I suppose Lucy did not tell you that she had put you into the haunted room?"

"No, indeed!"

"You must not listen to this silly boy, my dear Isabel," said Miss Wendale. "Of course, like all other old houses, Fernwood can boast its ghost-story; but since no one in my father's lifetime has ever seen the phantom, you may imagine that it is not a very formidable one."

"But you own there is a ghost?" I exclaimed eagerly. "Pray tell me the story."

"I'll tell you, Bella," answered Laurence, "and then you'll know what sort of visitor to expect when the bells of Fernwood church, hidden away behind the elms yonder, tremble on the stroke of midnight. A certain Sir Humphrey Wendale, who lived in the time of Henry the Eighth, was wronged by his wife, a very beautiful woman. Had he acted according to the ordinary fashion of the time, he would have murdered the lady and his rival; but our ancestor was of a more original turn of mind, and he hit upon an original plan of vengeance. He turned

every servant out of Fernwood House; and one morning, when the unhappy lady was sleeping, he locked every door of the mansion, secured every outlet and inlet, and rode away merrily in the summer sunshine, leaving his wife to die the slow and hideous death of starvation. Fernwood is lonely enough even now, Heaven knows! but it was lonelier in those distant days. A passing traveller may now and then have glanced upward at the smokeless chimneys, dimly visible across the trees, as he rode under the park-palings; but none ever dreamed that the deserted mansion had one luckless tenant. Fifteen months afterwards, when Sir Humphrey rode home from foreign travel, he had some difficulty in forcing the door of the chamber in which you are to sleep: the withered and skeleton form of his dead wife had fallen across the threshold."

"What a horrible story!" I exclaimed, with a shiver.

"It is only a legend, dear Isabel," said Lucy; "like all tradition, exaggerated and distorted into due proportions of poetic horror. Pray, do not suffer your mind to dwell upon such a fable."

"Indeed I hope it is not true," I answered.

"How fond people are of linking mysteries and horrors such as this with the history of an old family! And yet we never fall across any such family mystery in our own days."

I slept soundly that night at Fernwood, undisturbed by the attenuated shadow of Sybil Wendale, Sir Humphrey's unhappy wife. The bright sunshine was reflected in the oak-panels of my room, and the larks were singing high up in a cloudless blue sky, when I awoke. I found my aunt quite reconciled to her visit.

"Lady Adela is a very agreeable woman," she said; "quiet, perhaps, to a fault, but with that high tone of manner which is always charming. Lucy Wendale seems a dear good girl, though evidently a confirmed old maid. You will find her of inestimable use when you are married, that is to say, if you ever have to manage this great rambling place, which will of course fall to your lot in the event of poor Mr. Wendale's death."

As for myself, I was as happy at Fernwood as the August days were long. Lucy Wendale rode remarkably well. It was the only amusement for which she cared; and she and her horses were on terms of the most devoted attachment. Laurence, his sister, and I were therefore constantly out together, riding amongst the hills about Fernwood, and exploring the country for twenty miles round.

Indoors, Lucy left us very much to ourselves. She was the ruling spirit of the house, and but for her every thing must have fallen utterly to decay. Lady Adela read novels, or made a feeble attempt at amusing my aunt with her conversation. Mr. Wendale kept his room during the fore part of the day; while Laurence and I played, sang, sketched, and rattled the billiard-balls over the green cloth whenever bad weather drove us to indoor amusements.

It was one day that I was sketching the castellated façade of the old mansion, that I noticed one peculiar circumstance connected with the suite

of rooms occupied by the invalid, Mr. Thomas. These rooms were at the extreme left angle of the building, and were lighted by a range of six windows. I was surprised by observing that every one of these windows was of ground glass. I asked Laurence the reason of this.

"Why, I believe the glare of light was too much for Mr. Thomas," he answered; "so my father, who is the kindest creature in Christendom, had the windows made opaque, as you see them now."

"Has the alteration been long made?"

"It was made when I was about six years old; I have rather a vague recollection of the event, and I should not perhaps remember it but for one circumstance. I was riding about down here one morning on my Shetland pony, when my attention was attracted by a child who was looking through one of those windows. I was not near enough to see his face, but I fancy he must have been about my own age. He beckoned to me, and I was riding across the grass to respond to his invitation, when my sister Lucy appeared at the window and snatched the child away. I suppose he was some one belonging to the female attendant upon Mr. Thomas, and had strayed unnoticed into the invalid's rooms. I never saw him again; and the next day a glazier came over from York, and made the alteration in the windows."

"But Mr. Thomas must have air; I suppose the windows are sometimes opened," I said.

"Never; they are each ventilated by a single pane, which, if you observe, is open now."

"shut

"I cannot help pitying this poor man," I said, after a pause, out almost from the light of heaven by his infirmities, deprived of all society."

"Not entirely so," answered Laurence. "No one knows how many stolen hours my sister Lucy devotes to her poor invalid."

"Perhaps he is a very studious man, and finds his consolation in literary or scientific pursuits," I said; "does he read very much?"

"I think not. I never heard of his having any books got for him." "But one thing has puzzled me, Laurence," I continued. "Lucy spoke of him the other day as a young man, and yet Mrs Porson, your housekeeper, told me he had lived at Fernwood for upwards of twenty years."

To

"As for that," answered Laurence carelessly, "Lucy no doubt remembers him as a young man upon his first arrival here, and continues to call him so from mere force of habit. But, pray, my little inquisitive Bella, do not rack your brains about this poor relation of ours. tell the truth, I have become so used to his unseen presence in the house, that I have ceased to think of him at all. I meet a grim woman, dressed in black merino, coming out of the green-baize door, and I know that she is Mr. Thomas's nurse; or I see a solemn-faced man, and I am equally assured that he is Mr. Thomas's servant, James Beck, who has grown gray in his office; I encounter the doctor riding away from Fernwood on