"There--in the room! at the window!" she breathed. "It has gone!"
"What?" he asked, still keeping the hand, which she seemed too frightened to remove.
"I--I--scarcely know," she said, brokenly, and with a shudder, which Leicester felt. "A something white, with a light, at that little window."
"Oh, are you sure?" he asked, doubtfully, anxious to convince her that it was mere fancy. "Remember, we have just been talking about the ghost."
"No, no; it was not fancy," she said. "I saw it plainly enough. I was not thinking of it as I spoke, and I saw it when the moon got behind the cloud. It was in my father's room."
At that moment she started again. A voice so close behind her that it seemed to spring from the ground said: "Miss Mildmay, where are you? Oh, here you are!"
"How interested you look! What are you talking about?"
"Ghosts," said Leicester, fixing his dark, scrutinizing eyes upon him. "Did you not hear Miss Mildmay call out?"
"No," said the captain, innocently, "I only just came up."
But he had been close beside them for some minutes, and had not only heard Violet's low cry of terror, but the whole of the conversation.
Some quiet evenings are more productive of matter for reflection and afterthought than many more exciting and apparently eventful ones. How little there is to talk over a ball! One quadrille is like another and one partner very much like another. Most ballrooms are hot, most partners are unsuitable. But how often a quiet evening with a few friends in a country house is the beginning of some great matter--the mustard seed whence springs the shadowing tree, the bend of the stream which changes its whole course!
So it was with several of the members of Mrs. Dodson's quiet, little dinner.
Five of them at least returned to rest that night very thoughtful.
The captain, when he had reached the little boudoir, or dressing-room, of his luxurious suite, cast off as if it were a mask the careless smile of simple amiability and showed in his countenance some of the subtle working of his brain.
As he walked to the window and looked out upon the scene bathed in the moonlight, his face grave and frowning with deep thought, he looked a very different person to the easy-going gentleman of fortune which he had appeared in the drawing-room a few minutes before.