She did not know how long she remained pondering these questions,
making a circuitous round through the grounds, under the shadows, until
she got back again, gliding noiselessly to the veranda, from which she
could dart into the house at any return of her unwelcome suitor. But she
still stood there after all had relapsed into the perfect silence of
night in such a place. The tourists in the boat had rowed to the beach
and disembarked, and disappeared on their way home. The evening breeze
dropped altogether and ceased to move the trees, while she still stood
against the trellis-work scarcely visible in the gloom, wondering,
trying to think, trying to satisfy the questions that arose in her mind,
with a vague sense that if she but knew what young Everard meant, there
might be in it some guide, some clue to the mystery which weighed upon
her soul. But this was not all that Rosalind was to encounter. While she
stood thus gazing out from her with eyes that noted nothing, yet could
not but see, she was startled by something, a little wandering shadow,
not much more substantial than her dreams, which flitted across the
scene before her. Her heart leaped up with a pang of terror. What was
it? When the idea of the supernatural has once gained admission into the
mind the mental perceptions are often disabled in after-emergencies. Her
strength abandoned her. She covered her eyes with her hands, with a rush
of the blood to her head, a failing of all her powers. Something white
as the moonlight flitting across the moonlight, a movement, a break in
the stillness of nature. When she looked up again there was nothing to
be seen. Was there nothing to be seen? With a sick flutter of her heart,
searching the shadows round with keen eyes, she had just made sure that
there was nothing on the terrace, when a whiteness among the shrubs drew
her eyes farther down. Her nerves, which had played her false for a
moment, grew steady again, though her heart beat wildly. There came a
faint sound like a footstep, which reassured her a little. In such
circumstances sound is salvation. She herself was a sight to have
startled any beholder, as timidly, breathlessly, under the impulse of a
visionary terror, she came out, herself all white, into the whiteness
of the night. She called “Is there any one there?” in a very tremulous
voice. No answer came to her question; but she could now see clearly the
other moving speck of whiteness, gliding on under the dark trees,
emerging from the shadows, on to a little point of vision from which the
foliage had been cleared a little farther down. It stood there for a
moment, whiteness on whiteness, the very embodiment of a dream. A sudden
idea flashed into Rosalind’s mind, relieving her brain, and, without
pausing a moment, she hurried down the path, relieved from one fear only
to be seized by another. She reached the little ghost as it turned from
that platform to continue the descent. The whiteness of the light had
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