Harrison and Fell were within a few yards of the plantation, when the vague pillar of illusive whiteness that flitted in the shadow of the trees moved towards them, and, after the slight hesitation of one who dreads to plunge, stepped into the moonlight. But having thus dared the shock of immersion, it seemed that for the moment her strength could carry her no further. She stood motionless and with an effect of strained effort, on the shadow, her eyes downcast and her crossed hands grasping the ends of the tulle scarf that draped her head and shoulders. In that stiff pose, with the rigid lines of her figure delivered milk-white against the sullen background of the yews, she looked less like a human being than the rather conventional image of some idealised virgin, the expression of a dream, modelled none too definitely in wax by an artist whose recollection of his vision was already fading. Harrison stopped short and laid his hand on Fell’s arm. “Who is it?” he asked him. It was manifestly an absurd question to put to his companion, a stranger in Long Orton; but in the first agitation of the discovery Harrison clutched at the nearest support. “No idea!” Fell replied. He was suddenly disappointed and downcast. This girl, whoever she might be, was certainly not Phyllis, and all the furious expectations and fine resolves that had wonderfully lighted him had been quenched with an abruptness that left him listless and momentarily devoid of curiosity. “Who is it?” repeated Greatorex, who had been only a pace or two behind them. He spoke in the tone a man might use while surreptitiously addressing his neighbour during a church-service. This echo of his own question seemed to annoy Harrison. He shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, and turning round addressed his wife in a voice that was unnecessarily strident. “Here’s a mysterious lady come to call upon us, Emma,” he said. And then Mrs. Harrison, giggling nervously, put the essential but manifestly hopeless question for the third time. “Who is she?” she asked, in an undertone. Harrison may have hoped that the shock of his voice, and, perhaps, of his determinedly sceptical attitude, would have exorcised the phantom that was assuredly, so he had already decided, the creation of a moment’s excited imagination. But when he turned back to face the plantation, the pale figure still stood in the same attitude, and seemed now, moreover, to have attained a sharper definition of outline; to be altogether more human and solid. “By Jove, you know, it _is_ someone, after all,” Harrison murmured. “Oh! it _is_ someone, right enough,” Fell said, at present concerned only with the fact that it was not the right someone. “Oh! Well!” Harrison softly ejaculated, as one who braces himself to an encounter. He stepped forward a couple of paces with a slightly grotesque air of greeting. “Hm! hm! I don’t quite know ...” he said; “that is, might I ask whom we have the pleasure of--of meeting so unexpectedly?”