The little girl--a flaxen-haired, pretty-featured child--kissed the baby, kissed papa, and dutifully departed. Sir Jasper followed her out of the room, down the stairs, and back into the library, with the face of a man who has just been reprieved from sudden death. As he re-entered the library, he paused and started a step back, gazing fixedly at one of the windows. The heavy curtain had been partially drawn back, and a white, spectral face was glued to the glass, glaring in.
"Who have we here?" said the baronet to himself; "that face can belong to no one in the house."
He walked straight to the window--the face never moved. A hand was raised and tapped on the glass. A voice outside spoke: "For Heaven's sake, open and let me in, before I perish in this bitter storm."
Sir Jasper Kingsland opened the window and flung it wide.
"Enter! whoever you are," he said. "No one shall ask in vain at Kingsland, this happy night."
He stepped back, and, all covered with snow, the midnight intruder entered and stood before him. And Sir Jasper Kingsland saw the strangest-looking creature he had ever beheld in the whole course of his life.