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superstitious dread I had so often scoffed at in others. I daren’t turn round. Something or somebody was watching me silently.
    ‘You’re frightened,’ a light, childish voice said contemptuously.
    ‘You’re a coward, just as I thought you’d be!’
    I gave a long, shuddering sigh and slowly turned in my chair.
    A young girl stood against the panelled wall contemplating me scornfully.
    Slowly I regained my wits and stopped trembling as I saw that behind the small, slight figure was a blank, gaping square in the panelling. Instinctively I guessed who my visitor was. ‘You’re Melinda, aren’t you?’
    She nodded. ‘I’m Melinda Markham. How did you guess?’
    So I had met the ‘odious child’ of Diana’s diary!
    ‘Of course you’re not so clever,’ she added with contempt.
    ‘Mrs. Kinnefer must have told you about me. It’s my hair! How could you miss it?’ There was something half proud, half defiant about the declaration.
    I forbore to tell her that Mrs. Kinnefer had not described her appearance, but that she had conveyed graphically enough the girl’s peculiarities. But it was true that even the child’s hair alone would ensure that she would not be overlooked. It was the most extraordinary colour I had ever seen. It had the tones of bleached stubble and was as straight and fine as embroidery silk. But it wasn’t really beautiful. It was on the contrary disconcerting.
    Against the white, colourless face and transparent, glassy blue of her eyes it was somehow sinister and disturbing.
    She advanced towards me. ‘I was watching you for ages, but you didn’t know it, did you?’ she sounded gleeful.
    ‘You had no right to do that,’ I said weakly.
    She shrugged. ‘Why not? It’s fun spying on people— especially when they don’t know it.’
    ‘But does Mrs. Kinnefer know you creep around like that?’
    She shook her head, her pale eyes sly. ‘Of course not. Do you think I ran off and blurted to that stupid old woman that I’d found the secret passage? She’d nag at Uncle Garth to block it up or something and spoil all my fun.’
    ‘Then what makes you tell me? Why do you think I won’t tell your Uncle Garth?’
    ‘Because I know,’ she said with conviction. ‘I’ve been watching you, as I said. I can tell about people. You see, I’ve the second sight.’ She said this with an air of childish self-importance that belied her almost uncanny air of maturity.
    ‘How did you discover the passage?’ I asked curiously.
    She was pleased at my interest, I could see, her translucent eyes bright. ‘Mrs. Kinnefer told me that Uncle Giles was always searching for a passage in the picture gallery when he was a little boy. The house is terribly old, you know. So I kept searching too and I found it,’ she said triumphantly, ‘but no one but yourself knows. You must promise not to tell,’ she said severely.
    ‘And why should I make such a promise? And anyway, if you haven’t told anyone so far, why have you told me? You’ve no guarantee that I won’t tell your secret.’ Somehow it seemed perfectly normal to speak to this extraordinary child like an adult.
    She regarded me warily for a moment, then said smugly, ‘You won’t tell because I can make things very uncomfortable for you if you do. That’s why I let you know. Before I was sent to school I got rid of all the governesses Uncle Garth engaged. In the end they were glad to go, I can tell you,’ she added gleefully, ‘and you will be too if you sneak on me.’
    ‘But perhaps you won’t find it so easy to get rid of me,’ I said dryly. ‘After all, your uncle didn’t engage me to teach you.’
    She regarded herself silently in the long mirror, then pirouetted slowly and frowned thoughtfully at her reflection. ‘No, that’s true,’ she conceded. ‘You’re for some horrid French boy who’s coming soon. But I’ve nothing much to do on my holidays, so I’ll have lessons with you —not that I mean to learn anything, of