Cora glanced up as the door banged after her lord and master, and ordered the servants back to bed. Then she turned toward Celine, saying:

"That door was certainly not locked when we came to it, for I was here even sooner than Mr. Arthur."

Celine smiled again: "Mademoiselle dismissed me before she had finished her luncheon. I had disrobed her previously, and she said she should retire as soon as she drank her coffee. She may have forgotten the door."

Cora turned toward the bed. "Did you lock your door, Ellen?"

But Ellen did not know; she could not remember if she had or had not.

Then Cora said to Celine: "I am glad to find you so sensible. We shall have hard work now to convince those ridiculous servants that there is not a ghost in every corner."

"I do not think that graves open," replied the girl, seriously.

Then she gave her undivided attention to her mistress, who bade fair to be hysterical for the rest of the night.

Miss Arthur would not be left alone again. No argument could convince her that the specter was born of her imagination, and therefore not likely to return. So Cora bade Celine prepare to spend the remainder of the night in Miss Arthur's dressing room.

Accordingly, Celine withdrew to her own apartment, where her preparations were made as follows:

First, she shook out the folds of a sheet that hung over a chair, and restored it to its proper place on the bed. Then she removed from her dressing stand a box of white powder, and brushed away all traces of said powder from her garments and the floor. Next, she carefully hid away a key that had fallen to the floor and lay near the classically folded sheet. These things accomplished, she made a few additions to her toilet, extinguished the light, locked her door carefully, trying it afterward to make assurance doubly sure, and retraced her steps to relieve Cora, who was dutifully sitting by the spinster's bed, and beginning to shiver in her somewhat scanty drapery.

As the night wore on, and Miss Arthur became calmed and quiet, the girl lay back in the big dressing chair, gazing into the grate, and thinking. Her thoughts were sometimes of Claire, sometimes of Clarence; of the Girards, and of Edward Percy; then of her success as a ghostess, and at this she would almost laugh.

But from every subject her mind would turn again and again to one question, that repeated itself until it took the form of a goblin and danced through her dreams, when at last she slept, whispering over and over:

"What is it that Cora Arthur carries in a belt about her waist? what is it? what is it?"

For the girl had made a strange discovery while Cora was sitting beside Miss Arthur's bed, clad only in night's scanty drapery.

CHAPTER XXV.

SOME DAYS OF WAITING.

Doctor Vaughan had written that he could find his way with ease to Nurse Hagar's cottage, and he did.

Swinging himself down upon the dark end of the platform, when the evening train puffed into Bellair village, he crossed the track, and walked rapidly along the path that led in the direction of the cottage. He strode on until the light from the cottage window gleamed out upon the night, and his way led over the field. Half way between the stile and the cottage, a form, evidently that of a woman, appeared before him, and coming in his direction.

The figure came nearer, and a voice, that was certainly not Madeline's, said: "Is the gentleman going to old Hagar's cottage?"

"Are you Hagar?" replied Clarence, Yankee fashion.

"I am Hagar; and you are?"

"Doctor Vaughan."

"Then pass on, sir; the one you seek is there."

And the old woman waved her hand toward the light and hobbled on.

Clarence stared after her for a moment; but the darkness had devoured her, and he resumed his way toward the cottage.

In hastening to meet a friend we naturally have, in our mind, a picture. Our friend will look so, or so. Thus with Clarence Vaughan.

Expecting to meet a pair of deep, sad, beautiful eyes, lifted to his own; to behold a fair forehead shadowed by soft, shining curls; judge of Clarence's surprise when the opened door revealed to him a small being of no shape in particular; a very black head of hair, surmounted by an ugly maid's cap; and a pair of unearthly, staring blue glasses.

Madeline had chosen to appear "in character" at this interview. She intended to keep her own personality out of sight, and she felt that she needed the aid and concealment that her disguise would afford. She would give Claire's schemes no vantage ground.

So Madeline Payne was carefully hidden away under the wig and pigment and padding; and Celine Leroque courteseyed demurely as she held the door open to admit him, and said:

"Good evening, _Monsieur le Docteur_; you perceive I am here before you."

"Rather, I don't perceive it. _You_ are here before me in a double sense of the word; yes. And I suppose you call yourself--"

"Celine Leroque, at your service; maid-in-waiting to Miss Arthur, of Oakley."

Doctor Vaughan laughed.

"Well, won't you shake hands with an American of no special importance, Celine Leroque?"

She placed her hand in his and then drew forward a chair.

"I hope you found no difficulty in getting out to-night?" he said, sitting down and looking at her with a half-amused, half-grave countenance.

"None whatever; I have been suffering with a sick-headache all day."

"And you can get in again unseen?"

"Easily; in the evening the servants are all below stairs."

"But what an odd disguise! Do they never question your blue glasses?"

"Not half so much as they would question the eyes without them. They believe my eyes were ruined by close application to fine needle-work.

And then--" she pushed up the glasses a trifle, and he saw that the eyelid, and a line underneath the eye, were artistically _rouged_--"they all acknowledge that my eyes look very weak."

"I fancy they'll find those eyes have looked too sharply for them, by and by."

She laughed lightly. "I hope so."

Sitting there in her prim disguise, the girl felt glad to gaze upon him; felt as if, look as much as she would, she was gazing from a safe distance.

Dr. Vaughan came straight to the point of his visit, beginning by requesting a repetition of such portion of the facts she had discovered as related most particularly to the two men, Davlin and Percy. Then he made his suggestion. To his surprise it was a welcome one to the girl.

"That is just what I have had in mind," she said, thoughtfully. "After reflecting, I have changed my plans somewhat, and I don't see my way quite so clearly as before."

He was looking at her attentively, but asked no questions.