This time her nerves, already shaken, were not equal to the renewed torture of terror inflicted on them.

She threw on her dressing-gown, and rushed out of her room in the middle of the night.
The porter, alarmed by the banging of the door, met her hurrying headlong down the stairs, in search of the first human being she could find to keep her company.

Considerably surprised at this last new manifestation of the famous 'English eccentricity,' the man looked at the hotel register, and led the lady upstairs again to the room occupied by her maid.

The maid was not asleep, and, more wonderful still, was not even undressed.

She received her mistress quietly.
When they were alone, and when Mrs.Norbury had, as a matter of necessity, taken her attendant into her confidence, the woman made a very strange reply.
'I have been asking about the hotel, at the servants' supper to-night,' she said.