"You hear that, you girls? You are witnesses, remember! I'm off this minute, and if I meet my spouse I'll bring him back for a warm by the fire, so stoke up and get a good blaze. I hope he will think I am becomingly arrayed." He was sure to do that, was Mademoiselle's reflection as she smiled back into the sparkling face, and watched the tall figure flit down the corridor. Quite ghost-like it looked in the cold blue rays which came in through the windows, the dead white of the dress standing out sharply against the darkness of the background. It was almost as if the spirit of one of those old ancestors whose portraits lined the walls had come back to revisit her old home, and Bridgie shivered as she looked, and turned on Pat with unusual sharpness. "What nonsense are you up to now? She'll not catch anything but her death of cold, wandering about those galleries with her bare arms and neck. Spirits indeed! You ought to know better than to believe in such nonsense; but there's some mischief afoot, or you wouldn't be so generous all of a sudden. What's the meaning of it now? Tell me this minute!" Pat's grin of delight extended from ear to ear; he stood in obstinate silence until the last flicker of whiteness disappeared in the distance, then shut the door, and deliberately barred it with his back. "Sit down, then, and I'll give the history; but don't attempt to get out, for you'll not pass this door except over my dead body. You say she won't meet anybody, do you? That's where you are wrong, for he's waiting for her at this very minute. He came ringing at the door five minutes ago, the young Englishman that's with the Trelawneys, and that father was after offering a mount to the other day. `Is Mr O'Shaughnessy at home?' says he. `He is, sir,' says Molly, knowing no better, for she never had a sight of the Major after dinner. `Can I see him for a moment? I'll not come farther than the hall, for the cart's waiting, and I am not fit to enter a room.' So with that he comes in, six foot two, if he's an inch, and covered from head to foot in a shiny white mackintosh, with his head peeping out on top, and I've seen uglier men than him before this. I was coming down the stairs after shedding me sheets, and Molly was asking me where the Major might be, so I told her to send Dennis in search, and I was all smiles and apologies for the darkness of the place, with only the one lamp and the fire dying out on the hearth. `I'll fetch more light,' says I, and, `Pray do nothing of the kind. It's charming to see this fine old place lit up by the moonlight; I could study it for an hour on end. A perfect setting for a ghost story, isn't it?' says he, smiling, and with that he crosses over to the window, and by the same token it was a regular ghost he looked himself, all tall, and straight, and shiny white. Then it walked into my head what a jest it would be to send Esmeralda to meet him, and the