“Ah, but you have not the lawn at hand to-night, or your woman to arrange your head,” interjected De Malfort quickly. “It would be a capital joke; but it must be for another occasion and choicer company. The rabble you have to-night is not worth it. Besides, there is Rochester, who is past-master in disguises, and would smoke you at a glance. Let me arrange it some night before the end of the summer—when there is a waning moon. It were a pity the thing were done ill.” “Will you really plan a party for me, and let me appear to them on the stroke of one, with my face whitened? I have as slender a shape as most women.” “There is no such sylph in London.” “And I can make myself look ethereal. Will you draw the nun’s habit for me? and I will give your picture to Lewin to copy.” “I will do more. I will get you a real habit.” “But there are no nuns so white as the ghost.” “True, but you may rely upon me. The nun’s robes shall be there, the phosphorous, the blue fire, and a selection of the choicest company to tremble at you. Leave the whole business to my care. It will amuse me to plan so exquisite a jest for so lovely a jester.” He bent down to kiss her hand, till his forehead almost touched her knee, and in the few moments that passed before he raised it, she heard him laughing softly to himself, as if with irrepressible delight. “What a child you are,” she said, “to be pleased with such folly!” “What children we both are, Hyacinth! My sweet soul, let us always be childish, and find pleasure in follies. Life is such a poor thing, that if we had leisure to appraise its value we should have a contagion of suicide that would number more deaths than the plague. Indeed, the wonder is, not that any man should commit _felo de se_, but that so many of us should take the trouble to live.” Lady Sarah received them at the landing-stage, with an escort of fops and fine ladies; and the festival promised to be a success. There was a better supper, and more wine than people expected from her ladyship; and after supper a good many of those who pretended to have come to see the ghost, wandered off in couples to saunter along the willow-shaded bank, while only the more earnest spirits were content to wait and watch and listen in the great vaulted hall, with no light but the moon which sent a flood of silver through the high Gothic window, from which every vestige of glass had long vanished.