They shall always serve you--oh, always! always!--as faithfully as if they were your own. The veriest trifle of a visible thing that I look at with any interest, you shall as good as look at too. I might have had my own little harmless secrets, dear, with another husband; but with you to have even so much as a thought in secret seems like taking the basest, the cruelest advantage of your blindness. I do love you so, Lenny! I am so much fonder of you now than I was when we were first married--I never thought I should be, but I am. You are so much handsomer to me, so much cleverer to me, so much more precious to me in every way. But I am always telling you that, am I not? Do you get tired of hearing me? No? Are you sure of that? Very, very, very sure?" She stopped, and looked at him earnestly, with a smile on her lips, and the tears still glistening in her eyes. Just then the child stirred a little in his cot, and drew her attention away. She arranged the bedclothes over him, watched him in silence for a little while, then sat down again on the stool at Leonard's feet. "Baby has turned his face quite round toward you now," she said. "Shall I tell you exactly how he looks, and what his bed is like, and how the room is furnished?"
Without waiting for an answer, she began to describe the child's appearance and position with the marvelous minuteness of a woman's observation. While she proceeded, her elastic spirits recovered themselves, and its naturally bright happy expression reappeared on her face. By the time the nurse returned to her post, Rosamond was talking with all her accustomed vivacity, and amusing her husband with all her accustomed success.
When they went back to the drawing-room, she opened the piano and sat down to play. "I must give you your usual evening concert, Lenny," she said, "or I shall be talking again on the forbidden subject of the Myrtle Room."
She played some of Mr. Frankland's favorite airs, with a certain union of feeling and fancifulness in her execution of the music, which seemed to blend the charm of her own disposition with the charm of the melodies which sprang into life under her touch. After playing through the airs she could remember most easily, she ended with the Last Waltz of Weber. It was Leonard's favorite, and it was always reserved on that account to grace the close of the evening's performance.
She lingered longer than usual over the last plaintive notes of the waltz; then suddenly left the piano, and hastened across the room to the fireplace.
"Surely it has turned much colder within the last minute or two," she said, kneeling down on the rug, and holding her face and hands over the fire.
"Has it?" returned Leonard. "I don't feel any change."
"Perhaps I have caught cold," said Rosamond. "Or perhaps," she added, laughing rather uneasily, "the wind that goes before the ghostly lady of the north rooms has been blowing over me. I certainly felt something like a sudden chill, Lenny, while I was playing the last notes of Weber."
"Nonsense, Rosamond. You are overfatigued and overexcited. Tell your maid to make you some hot wine and water, and lose no time in getting to bed."
Rosamond cowered closer over the fire. "It's lucky I am not superstitious," she said, "or I might fancy that I was predestined to see the ghost."
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CHAPTER IV.
STANDING ON THE BRINK.
THE first night at Porthgenna passed without the slightest noise or interruption of any kind. No ghost, or dream of a ghost, disturbed the soundness of Rosamond's slumbers. She awoke in her usual spirits and her usual health, and was out in the west garden before breakfast.
The sky was cloudy, and the wind veered about capriciously to all the points of the compass. In the course of her walk Rosamond met with the gardener, and asked him what he thought about the weather. The man replied that it might rain again before noon, but that, unless he was very much mistaken, it was going to turn to heat in the course of the next four-and-twenty hours.
"Pray, did you ever hear of a room on the north side of our old house called the Myrtle Room?" inquired Rosamond. She had resolved, on rising that morning, not to lose a chance of making the all-important discovery for want of asking questions of everybody in the neighborhood and she began with the gardener accordingly.
"I never heard tell of it, ma'am," said the man. "But it's a likely name enough, considering how the myrtles do grow in these parts."
"Are there any myrtles growing at the north side of the house?" asked Rosamond, struck with the idea of tracing the mysterious room by searching for it outside the building instead of inside. "I mean close to the walls," she added, seeing the man look puzzled; "under the windows, you know?"
"I never see anything under the windows in my time but weeds and rubbish," replied the gardener.
Just then the breakfast-bell rang. Rosamond returned to the house, determined to explore the north garden, and if she found any relic of a bed of myrtles to mark the window above it, and to have the room which that window lighted opened immediately. She confided this new scheme to her husband. He complimented her on her ingenuity, but confessed that he had no great hope of any discoveries being made out of doors, after what the gardener had said about the weeds and rubbish.
As soon as breakfast was over, Rosamond rang the bell to order the gardener to be in attendance, and to say that the keys of the north rooms would be wanted. The summons was answered by Mr. Frankland's servant, who brought up with him the morning's supply of letters, which the postman had just delivered. Rosamond turned them over eagerly, pounced on one with an exclamation of delight, and said to her husband--"The Long Beckley postmark! News from the vicar, at last!"
She opened the letter and ran her eye over it--then suddenly dropped it in her lap with her face all in a glow. "Lenny!" she exclaimed, "there is news here that is positively enough to turn one's head. I declare the vicar's letter has quite taken away my breath!"
"Read it," said Mr. Frankland; "pray read it at once."
Rosamond complied with the request in a very faltering, unsteady voice. Doctor Chennery began his letter by announcing that his application to Andrew Treverton had remained unanswered; but he added that it had, nevertheless, produced results which no one could possibly have anticipated. For information on the subject of those results, he referred Mr. and Mrs. Frankland to a copy subjoined of a communication marked private, which he had received from his man of business in London.
The communication contained a detailed report of an interview which had taken place between Mr. Treverton's servant and the messenger who had called for an answer to Doctor Chennery's letter. Shrowl, it appeared, had opened the interview by delivering his master's message, had then produced the vicar's torn letter and the copy of the Plan, and had announced his readiness to part with the latter for the consideration of a five-pound note. The messenger had explained that he had no power to treat for the document, and had advised Mr. Treverton's servant to wait on Doctor Chennery's agent. After some hesitation, Shrowl had decided to do this on pretense of going out on an errand--had seen the agent--had been questioned about how he became possessed of the copy--and, finding that there would be no chance of disposing of it unless he answered all inquiries, had related the circumstances under which the copy had been made. After hearing his statement, the agent had engaged to apply immediately for instructions to Doctor Chennery; and had written accordingly, mentioning in a postscript that he had seen the transcribed Plan, and had ascertained that it really exhibited the positions of doors, staircases, and rooms, with the names attached to them.
Resuming his own letter, Doctor Chennery proceeded to say that he must now leave it entirely to Mr. and Mrs. Frankland to decide what course they ought to adopt.