They were just in time to see the figure, in the red head-gear and long grey dressing-gown, slowly stalking from the scullery door.

The captain followed the phantom into the garden; but held himself at a respectful distance from the figure, as it slowly paced along the smooth gravel pathway leading towards the laurel hedge.

The figure reached the low boundary that divided the garden from the river bank, crossed it, and vanished amongst the thick white mists that rose from the water.

Joseph Duncombe trembled. A ghost was just the one thing which could strike terror to the seaman's bold heart.

When the figure had vanished, Captain Duncombe went to the spot where it had passed out of the garden.

Here he found the young laurels beaten and trampled down, as if by the heavy feet of human intruders.

This was strange.

He then went to the kitchen, accompanied by Susan Trott, who, although shivering like an aspen tree, had just sufficient strength of mind to find a lucifer and light her candle.

By the light of this candle Captain Buncombe examined the kitchen.

On the hearth, at his feet, he saw something gleaming in the uncertain light. He stooped to pick up this object, and found that it was a curious gold coin--a foreign coin, bent in a peculiar manner.

This was even yet more strange.

The captain put the coin in his pocket.

"I'll take good care of this, my girl," he said. "It isn't often a ghost leaves anything behind him."

CHAPTER XV.

A TERRIBLE RESOLVE.

When the hawthorns were blooming in the woods of Raynham, a new life dawned in the stately chambers of the castle.

A daughter was born to the beautiful widow-lady--a sweet consoler in the hour of her loneliness and desolation. Honoria Eversleigh lifted her heart to heaven, and rendered thanks for the priceless treasure which had been bestowed upon her. She had kept her word. From the hour of her husband's death she had never quitted Raynham Castle. She had lived alone, unvisited, unknown; content to dwell in stately solitude, rarely extending her walks and drives beyond the boundary of the park and forest.

Some few of the county gentry would have visited her; but she would not consent to be visited by a few. Honoria Eversleigh's was a proud spirit; and until the whole county should acknowledge her innocence, she would receive no one.

"Let them think of me or talk of me as they please," she said; "I can live my own life without them."

Thus the long winter months passed by, and Honoria was alone in that abode whose splendour must have seemed cold and dreary to the friendless woman.

But when she held her infant in her arms all was changed She looked down upon the baby-girl, and murmured softly--

"Your life shall be bright and peaceful, dearest, whatever mine may be.

The future looks bleak and terrible for me; but for you, sweet one, it may be bright and fair."

The young mother loved her child with a passionate intensity; but even that love could not exclude darker passions from her breast.

There was much that was noble in the nature of this woman; but there was also much that was terrible. From her childhood she had been gifted with a power of intellect--a strength of will--that lifted her high above the common ranks of womanhood.

A fatal passion had taken possession of her soul after the untimely death of Sir Oswald; and that passion was a craving for revenge. She had been deeply wronged, and she could not forgive. She did not even try to forgive. She believed that revenge was a kind of duty which she owed, not only to herself, but to the noble husband whom she had lost.

The memory of that night of anguish in Yarborough Tower, and that still darker hour of shame and despair in which Sit Oswald had refused to believe her innocent, was never absent from the mind of Honoria Eversleigh. She brooded upon these dark memories. Time could not lessen their bitterness. Even the soft influence of her infant's love could not banish those fatal recollections.

Time passed. The child grew and flourished, beautiful to her mother's enraptured eyes; and yet, even by the side of that fair baby's face arose the dark image of Victor Carrington.

For a long time the county people had kept close watch upon the proceedings of the lady at the castle.

The county people discovered that Lady Eversleigh never left Raynham; that she devoted herself to the rearing of her child as entirely as if she had been the humblest peasant-woman; and that she expended more money upon solid works of charity than had ever before been so spent by any member of the Eversleigh family, though that family had been distinguished by much generosity and benevolence.

The county people shrugged their shoulders contemptuously. They could not believe in the goodness of this woman, whose parentage no one knew, and whom every one had condemned.

She is playing a part, they thought; she wishes to impress us with the idea that she is a persecuted martyr--a suffering angel; and she hopes thus to regain her old footing amongst us, and queen it over the whole county, as she did when that poor infatuated Sir Oswald first brought her to Raynham. This was what the county people thought; until one day the tidings flew far and wide that Lady Eversleigh had left the castle for the Continent, and that she intended to remain absent for some years.

This seemed very strange; but what seemed still more strange, was the fact that the devoted mother was not accompanied by her child.

The little girl, Gertrude, so named after the mother of the late baronet, remained at Raynham under the care of two persons.

These two guardians were Captain Copplestone, and a widow lady of forty years of age, Mrs. Morden, a person of unblemished integrity, who had been selected as protectress and governess of the young heiress.

The child was at this time two and a half years of age. Very young, she seemed, to be thus left by a mother who had appeared to idolize her.

The county people shook their heads. They told each other that Lady Eversleigh was a hypocrite and an actress. She had never really loved her child--she had played the part of a sorrowing widow and a devoted mother for two years and a half, in the hope that by this means she would regain her position in society.

And now, finding that this was impossible, she had all of a sudden grown tired of playing her part, and had gone off to the Continent to spend her money, and enjoy her life after her own fashion.

This was what the world said of Honoria Eversleigh; but if those who spoke of her could have possessed themselves of her secrets, they would have discovered something very different from that which they imagined.

Lady Eversleigh left the castle in the early part of November accompanied only by her maid, Jane Payland.

A strange time of the year in which to start for the Continent, people said. It seemed still more strange that a woman of Lady Eversleigh's rank and fortune should go on a Continental journey with no other attendant than a maid-servant.

If the eyes of the world could have followed Lady Eversleigh, they would have made startling discoveries.

While it was generally supposed that the baronet's widow was on her way to Rome or Naples, two plainly-dressed women took possession of unpretending lodgings in Percy Street, Tottenham Court Road.

The apartments were taken by a lady who called herself Mrs. Eden, and who required them only for herself and maid. The apartments consisted of two large drawing-rooms, two bedrooms on the floor above, and a dressing-room adjoining the best bedroom.

The proprietor of the house was a Belgian merchant, called Jacob Mulck--a sedate old bachelor, who took a great deal of snuff, and Disquieted himself very little about the world in general, so long as life went smoothly for himself.

The remaining occupant of the house was a medical student, who rented one of the rooms on the third floor. Another room on the same floor was to let.

Such was the arrangement of the house when Mrs. Eden and her maid took possession of their apartments.

Mr. Jacob Mulck thought he had never seen such a beautiful woman as his new lodger, when he entered her apartment, to ascertain whether she was satisfied with the accommodation provided for her.