Suddenly she heard a stealthy sound behind her, as of an opened window or door. She was at the end of the slope, and turned round quickly at this indication of some one moving. At the end of the long range of windows she saw a head put dimly forth, and then disappear. Mary divined that it was her own appearance, vague as it must be in the twilight, which was the cause. She changed her position, rapidly concealing herself behind a clump of laurels, and waited. After a little interval there was a faint stir once more. Almost afraid to breathe, she looked out between the thick leaves. Something had come out into the dimness of the night. She felt only as Hetty had done, a movement, a something that was human, a new breathing in the still atmosphere. The leaves rustled now and then in the night air, and she felt as if it must be she who did it, and put her hands upon the bough to keep them still. A strange horror, half superstitious, came over her; something was coming without any sound, with nothing but a consciousness in the tingling atmosphere. She forgot the yielding of the turf, in which no footstep was audible. It seemed to her that something incorporate, some vision sensible to the mind alone, must be moving past unseen. Terror took possession of her soul. Was it this then, and not any suffering human creature, some one who had _come back_, some one out of the darkness of the grave, whose presence should chill the blood in her veins, as he had chilled her child’s. Mary felt as if she hung by her hands from the laurel boughs, which she had grasped to keep them still. Then, with a sensation of utter horror, she felt herself slip from them, her hands relaxing. It had passed; her heart stood still; the surging blood went up and up in blinding circles to her brain. Then there was a sudden calm in her being, and the common action of life was taken up again in a moment. In front of her, going softly across the dim lawn, was a long slim shadow, the head bent a little, the gait uncertain, swaying as if with weakness. Mary’s superstitious terrors had vanished in a moment. It was a man she saw; who he was no one could have told, in the faint evening, on the noiseless grass; but at all events it was a man.