"Unless you want to make a maniac of her. I am serious in this; you must not allude in the remotest way to the cause of her illness when you visit her, or you may regret your indiscretion while you live."

He spoke with a gravity that showed that he was in earnest. Rose shrugged her shoulders impatiently, and walked to Agnes' door. Grace followed at a sign from her brother, who ran down stairs.

The sick girl was not asleep--she lay with her eyes wide open, staring vacantly at the white wall. She looked at them, when they entered, with a half-frightened, half-inquiring gaze.

"Are you better, Agnes?" asked Rose, looking down at the colourless face.

"Oh, yes!"

She answered nervously, her fingers twisting in and out of her bed-clothes--her eyes wandering uneasily from one to the other.

"Wouldn't you like something to eat?" inquired Rose, not knowing what else to say.

"Oh, no!"

"You had better have some tea," said Grace decisively. "It will do you good. I will fetch you up some presently. Rose, there is the breakfast bell."

Rose, with a parting nod to Agnes, went off, very much disappointed, and in high dudgeon with Doctor Frank for not letting her cross-examine the seamstress on the subject of the ghost.

"The ghost she saw must have been Mr. Richards returning from his midnight stroll," thought Rose, shrewdly. "My opinion is, he is the only ghost in Danton Hall."

There was very little allusion made to the affair of last night, at the breakfast-table. It seemed to be tacitly understood that the subject was disagreeable; and beyond an inquiry of the Doctor, "How is your patient this morning?" nothing was said. But all felt vaguely there was some mystery. Doctor Frank's theory of optical illusion satisfied no one--there was something at the bottom that they did not understand.

The stormy day grew stormier as it wore on. Rose sat down at the drawing-room piano after breakfast, and tried to while away the forlorn morning with music. Kate was there, trying to work off a bad headache with a complicated piece of embroidery and a conversation with Mr.

Reginald Stanford. That gentleman sat on an ottoman at her feet, sorting silks, and beads, and Berlin wool, and Rose was above casting even a glance at them. Captain Danton, Sir Ronald, and the Doctor were playing billiards at the other end of the rambling old house. And upstairs poor Agnes Darling tossed feverishly on her hot pillow, and moaned, and slept fitfully, and murmured a name in her troubled sleep, and Grace watching her, and listening, heard the name "Harry."

Some of the gloom of the wretched day seemed to play on Rose's spirits.

She sang all the melancholy songs she knew, in a mournful, minor key, until the conversation of the other two ceased, and they felt as dismal as herself.

"Rose, don't!" Kate cried out in desperation at length. "Your songs are enough to give one the horrors. Here is Reginald with a face as gloomy as the day."

Rose got up in displeased silence, closed the piano, and walked to the door.

"Pray don't!" said Stanford; "don't leave us. Kate and I have nothing more to say to one another, and I have a thousand things to say to you."

"You must defer them, I fear," replied Rose. "Kate will raise your spirits with more enlivening music when I am gone."

"A good idea," said Kate's lover, when the door closed; "come, my dear girl, give us something a little less depressing than that we have just been favoured with."

"How odd," said Kate languidly, "that Rose will not like you. I cannot understand it."

"Neither can I," replied Mr. Stanford; "but since the G.o.ds have willed it so, why, there is nothing for it but resignation. Here is 'Through the woods, through the woods, follow and find me.' Sing that."

Kate essayed, but failed. Her headache was worse, and singing an impossibility.

"I am afraid I must lie down," she said. "I am half blind with the pain.

You must seek refuge in the billiard-room, Reginald, while I go upstairs."

Mr. Stanford expressed his regrets, kissed her hand--he was very calm and decorous with his stately lady-love--and let her go.

"I wish Rose had stayed," he thought; "poor little girl! how miserable she does look sometimes. I am afraid I have not acted quite right; and I don't know that I am not going to make a scoundrel of myself; but how is a fellow to help it? Kate's too beautiful and too perfect for mortal man; and I am very mortal, indeed, and should feel uncomfortable married to perfection."

He walked to the curtained recess of the drawing-room, where Rose had one morning battled with her despair, and threw himself down among the pillows of the lounge. Those very pillows whereon his handsome head rested had been soaked in Rose's tears, shed for his sweet sake--but how was he to know that? It was such a cozy little nook, so still and dusky, and shut in, that Mr. Stanford, whose troubles did not prey on him very profoundly, closed his dark eyes, and went asleep in five minutes.

And sleeping, Rose found him. Going to her room to read, she remembered she had left her book on the sofa in the recess, and ran down stairs again to get it. Entering the little room from the hall, she beheld Mr.

Stanford asleep, his head on his arm, his handsome face as perfect as something carved in marble, in its deep repose.

Rose stood still--any one might have stood and looked, and admired that picture, but not as she admired. Rose was in love with him--hopelessly, you know, therefore the more deeply. All the love that pride had tried, and tried in vain, to crush, rose in desperation stronger than ever within her. If he had not been her sister's betrothed, who could say what might not have been? If that sister was one degree less beautiful and accomplished, who could say what still might be? She had been such a spoiled child all her life, getting whatever she wanted for the asking, that it was very hard she should be refused now the highest boon she had ever craved--Mr. Reginald Stanford.

Did some mesmeric rapport tell him in his sleep she was there? Perhaps so, for without noise, or cause, his eyes opened and fixed on Rose's flushed and troubled face. She started away with a confused exclamation, but Stanford, stretching out his arm, caught and held her fast.

"Don't run away, Rose," he said, "How long have you been here? How long have I been asleep?"

"I don't know," said Rose, confusedly: "I came here for a book a moment ago only. Let me go, Mr. Stanford."

"Let you go? Surely not. Come, sit down here beside me, Rose. I have fifty things to say to you."

"You have nothing to say to me--nothing I wish to hear. Please let me go."

"On your dignity again, Rose?" he said, smiling, and mesmerizing her with his dark eyes; "when will you have done wearing your mask?"

"My mask!" Rose echoed, flushing; "what do you mean, Mr. Stanford?"

"Treating me like this! You don't want to leave me now, do you? You don't hate me as much as you pretend. You act very well, my pretty little Rose; but you don't mean it--you know you don't!"

"Will you let me go, Mr. Stanford?" haughtily.

"No, my dear; certainly not. I don't get the chance of _tete-a-tete_ with you so often that I should resign the priceless privilege at a word. We used to be good friends, Rose; why can't we be good friends again?"

"Used to be!" Rose echoed; and then her voice failed her. All her love and her wounded pride rose in her throat and choked her.

Reginald Stanford drew her closer to him, and tried to see the averted face.

"Won't you forgive me, Rose? I didn't behave well, I know; but I liked you so much. Won't you forgive me?"

A pa.s.sionate outburst of tears, that would no longer be restrained, answered him.

"Oh! how could you do it? How could you do it? How could you deceive me so?" sobbed Rose.

Stanford drew her closer still.

"Deceive you, my darling! How did I deceive you? Tell me, Rose, and don't cry!"

"You said--you said your name was Reinecourt, and it wasn't; and I didn't know you were Kate's lover, or I never would have--would have--oh! how could you do it?"

"My dear little girl, I told you the truth. My name is Reinecourt."

Rose looked up indignantly.