"I want to return immediately," was Kate's answer a little coldly. "I must speak to Mr. Ponsonby and find Eeny. Tell Sir Ronald, please, and hold yourself in readiness to attend us."

She swept off with Rose to find their hostess. Mrs. Ponsonby's regrets were unutterable, but Miss Danton was resolute.

"How absurd, you know, Helen," she said, to her daughter, when they were gone; "such nonsense about a sick seamstress."

"I thought Kate Danton was proud," said Miss Helen. "That does not look like it. I am not sorry she has gone, however, half the men in the room were making idiots of themselves about her."

Kate and Reginald Stanford returned as they had come, in the light sleigh; and Sir Ronald, Rose and Eeny, in the carriage. Rose, wrapped in her mantel, shrunk away in a corner, and never opened her lips. She watched gloomily, and so did the baronet, the cutter flying past over glittering snow, and Kate's sweet face, pale as the moonlight itself.

Captain Danton met them in the entrance hall, his florid face less cheery than usual. Kate came forward, her anxious inquiring eyes speaking for her.

"Better, my dear; much better," her father answered. "Doctor Frank works miracles. Grace and he are with her; he has given her an opiate, and I believe she is asleep."

"But what is it, papa?" cried Rose. "Did she see a ghost!"

"A ghost, my dear," said the Captain, chucking her under the chin. "You girls are as silly as geese, and imagine you see anything you like. She isn't able to tell what frightened her, poor little thing! Eunice is the only one who seems to know anything at all about it."

"And what does Eunice say?" asked Kate.

"Why," said Captain Danton, "it seems Eunice and Agnes were to sit up for you two young ladies, who are not able to take off your own clothes yet, and they chose Rose's room so sit in. About two hours ago, Agnes complained of toothache, and said she would go down stairs for some painkiller that was in the sewing-room. Eunice, who was half-asleep, remained where she was; and ten minutes after heard a scream that frightened her out of her wits. We had all retired, but the night-lamp was burning; and rushing out, she found Agnes leaning against the wall, all white and trembling. The moment Eunice spoke to her, 'I saw his ghost!' she said, in a choking whisper, and fell back in a dead faint in Eunice's arms. I found her so when I came out, for Eunice cried l.u.s.tily for help, and Grace and all the servants were there in two minutes. We did everything for her, but all in vain. She lay like one dead. Then Grace proposed to send for her brother. We sent. He came, and brought the dead to life."

"An extraordinary tale," said Reginald Stanford. "When she came to life, what did she say?"

"Nothing. Doctor Frank gave her an opiate that soothed her and sent her to sleep."

As he spoke, Doctor Frank himself appeared, his calm face as impenetrable as ever.

"How is your patient, Doctor?" asked Kate.

"Much better, Miss Kate. In a day or two we will have her all right, I think. She is a nervous little creature, with an overstrung and highly imaginative temperament. I wonder she has not seen ghosts long ago."

"You are not thinking of leaving us," said Captain Danton. "No, no, I won't hear of it. We can give you a bed and breakfast here equal to anything down at the hotel, and it will save you a journey up to-morrow morning. Is Grace with her yet?"

"Yes, Grace insists on remaining till morning. There is no necessity, though, for she will not awake."

Kate gathered up the folds of her rich ball-dress, and ran up the polished oaken stair, nodding adieu. Not to her own room, however, but to that of the seamstress.

The small chamber was dimly lighted by a lamp turned low. By the bedside sat Grace, wrapped in a shawl; on the pillow lay the white face of Agnes Darling, calm in her slumber, but colourless as the pillow itself.

Kate bent over her, and Grace arose at her entrance. It was such a contrast; the stately, beautiful girl, with jewelled flowers in her hair, her costly robe trailing the carpetless floor, the perfume of her dress and golden hair scenting the room, and the wan little creature, so wasted and pale, lying asleep on the low bed. Her hands grasped the bed-clothes in her slumber, and with every rise and fall of her breast, rose and fell a little locket worn round her neck by a black cord.

Kate's fingers touched it lightly.

"Poor soul!" she said; "poor little Agnes! Are you going to stay with her until morning, Grace?"

"Yes, Miss Danton."

"I could not go to my room without seeing her; but now, there is no necessity to linger. Good-morning."

Miss Danton left the room. Grace sat down again, and looked at the locket curiously.

"I should like to open that and see whose picture it contains, and yet--"

She looked a little ashamed, and drew back the hand that touched it. But curiosity--woman's intensest pa.s.sion--was not to be resisted.

"What harm can it be?" she thought. "She will never know."

She lifted the locket, lightly touched the spring, and it flew open. It contained more than a picture, although there was a picture of a handsome, boyish face that somehow had to Grace a familiar look. A slip of folded paper, a plain gold ring, and a tress of brown, curly hair dropped out. Grace opened the little slip of paper, and read it with an utterly confounded face. It was partly written and partly printed, and was the marriage certificate of Agnes Grant and Henry Darling. It bore date New York, two years before.

Grace dropped the paper astounded. Miss Agnes Darling was a married woman, then, and, childish as she looked, had been so for two years.

What were her reasons for denying it, and where was Henry Darling--dead or deserted?

She look at the pictured face again. Very good-looking, but very youthful and irresolute. Whom had she ever seen that looked like that?

Some one, surely, for it was as familiar as her own in the gla.s.s; but who, or where, or when, was all densest mystery.

There was an uneasy movement of the sleeper. Grace, feeling guilty, put back hastily the tress of hair--his, no doubt--the ring--a wedding-ring, of course--and the marriage certificate. She closed the locket, and laid it back on the fluttering heart. Poor little pale Agnes! that great trouble of woman's life, loving and losing, had come to her then already.

In the cold, gray dawn of the early morning, Grace resigned her office to Babette, the housemaid, and sought her room. Agnes Darling still slept--the merciful sleep Doctor Frank's opiate had given her.

CHAPTER IX.

A GAME FOR TWO TO PLAY AT.

A cold, raw, rainy, dismal morning--the sky black and hopeless of sunshine, the long bleak blasts complaining around the old house, and rattling ghostily the skeleton trees. The rain was more sleet than rain; for it froze as it fell, and clattered noisily against the blurred window-gla.s.s. A morning for hot coffee and m.u.f.fins, and roaring fires and newspapers and easy-chairs, and in which you would not have the heart to turn your enemy's dog from the door.

Doctor Danton stood this wild and wintry February morning at his chamber window, looking out absently at the slanting sleet, not thinking of it--not thinking of the pale blank of wet mist shrouding the distant fields and marshes, and village and river, but of something that made him knit his brows in perplexed, reflection.

"What was it she saw last, night?" he mused. "No spectre of the imagination, and no bona-fide ghost. Old Margery saw something, and now Agnes. I wonder--"

He stopped, there was a knock at the door.

"Come in," he said, and Grace entered.

"I did not know you were up," said Grace. "But it is very fortunate as it happens. I have just been to Miss Darling's room, and she is crying out for you in the wildest Manner."

"Ah!" said her brother, rising, "has she been awake long?"

"Nearly an hour, Babette tells me, and all that time she has been frantically calling for you. Her manner is quite frenzied, and I fear--"

"What do you fear?"

"That last night's fright has disordered her reason."

"Heaven forbid! I will go to her at once."

He left the room as he spoke, and ran upstairs to the chamber of the seamstress. The gray morning twilight stole drearily through the closed shutter, and the lamp burned dim and dismal still. Babette sat by the bedside trying to soothe her charge in very bad English, and evidently but with little success. The bed-clothes had been tossed off, the little thin hands closed and unclosed in them--the great dark eyes were wide and wild--the black hair all tossed and disordered on the pillow.