mistress each with a shake of her head no i have felt it before i have felt it up stairs and once on the staircase as i was going from her room to ours in the night � a rustle and a sort of trembling touch behind me my woman said mr grimly after advancing his nose to that lady s lips as a test for the detection of if you don t get tea pretty quick old woman you ll become sensible of a rustle and a touch that ll send you flying to the other end of the kitchen this stimulated mrs to herself and to little hasten up stairs to mrs s chamber but for all that she now began to entertain a settled conviction that there was something wrong in the gloomy house henceforth she was never at peace in it after daylight departed and never went up or down stairs in the dark without having her apron over her head lest she should see something what with these ghostly apprehensions and her singular dreams mrs fell that evening into a haunted state of mind from which it may be long before this present narrative any trace of her recovery in the and of all her new experiences and as everything about her was mysterious to herself she began to be mysterious to others and became as difficult to be made out to anybody s satisfaction as she found the house and everything in it difficult to make out to her own she had not yet finished preparing mrs s tea when the soft knock came to the door which always announced little mistress looked on at little taking off her homely bonnet in the hall and at mr his jaws and contemplating her in silence as expecting some wonderful consequence to which would frighten her out of her five wits or blow them all three to pieces after tea there came another knock at the door announcing arthur mistress went down to let him in and he said on entering i am glad it s you i want to ask you a question immediately replied for goodness sake don t ask me nothing arthur i am frightened out of one half of my life and dreamed out of the other don t ask me nothing i don t know which is which or what is what � and immediately started away from him and came near him no more mistress having no taste for reading and no sufficient light for in the subdued room supposing her to have the inclination now sat every night in the from which she had emerged on the evening of arthur s return occupied with crowds of wild speculations and suspicions respecting her mistress and her husband and the noises in the house when the ferocious exercises were engaged in these speculations would mistress s eyes towards the door as if she expected some dark form to appear at those moments and make the party one too many otherwise never said or did anything to attract the attention of the two clever ones towards her in any marked degree except on certain occasions generally at about the quiet hours towards bed time when she would suddenly dart out of her dim corner and whisper with a face of terror to mr reading the paper near mrs s little table there what s that noise then the noise if there were any would have ceased and mr would turning upon her as if she had cut him down that moment against his will old woman you shall have a dose old woman such a dose you have been dreaming again g little chapter the time being come for the renewal of his acquaintance with the family to contract made between himself and mr within the of bleeding heart yard turned his face on a certain saturday towards where mr had a cottage residence of his own the weather being fine and dry and any english road in interest for him who had been so long away he sent his on by the coach and set out to walk a walk was in itself a new enjoyment to him and one that had rarely his life afar off he went by and for the pleasure of strolling over the heath it was bright and shining there and when he found himself so far on his road to he found himself a long way on his road to a number of and less substantial they had risen before him fast in the exercise and the pleasant road it is not easy to walk alone in the country without musing upon something and he had plenty of unsettled subjects to upon though he had been walking to the land s end there was the subject seldom absent from his mind the question what he was to do henceforth in life to what occupation he should devote himself and in what direction he had best seek it he was far from rich and every day of and made his inheritance a source of greater anxiety to him as often as he began to consider how to increase this inheritance or to lay it by so often his that there was some one with an claim upon his justice returned and that alone was a subject to the longest walk again there was the subject of his relations with his mother which were now upon an and peaceful but never confidential footing and whom he saw several times a week little was a leading and a constant subject for the circumstances of his life united to those of her own story presented the little creature to him as the only person between whom and himself there were of innocent reliance on one hand and affectionate protection on the other ties of compassion respect unselfish interest gratitude and pity thinking of her and of the possibility of 