He takes up Bonnie again, and they go slowly back to the others. CHAPTER XXIV. ‘So bright a tear in Beauty’s eye, Love half regrets to kiss it dry.’ As Susan appears, the guilty ones upon the tennis-ground move simultaneously towards her, Betty with a shy little rush, and holding out to her her racket. ‘Come and have another game, Susan, and you, too, Mr. Crosby.’ ‘Yes, do,’ says Carew. ‘Tea will be here in a moment.’ He evidently holds this out as an inducement to Crosby to remain. Mr. Fitzgerald nobly backs him up. ‘Also Aunt Jemima!’ he says enthusiastically. This joke, if it is meant for one, is a dead failure. No one even smiles. Susan, who is feeling a little shy, and is horribly conscious that, in spite of Crosby’s assurances, her eyes are of a very tell-tale colour, is fighting with her brain for some light, airy, amusing remark that may prove to all present that she had only run away from them in mere search of physical exercise, when suddenly the rather forced smile dies upon her lips, and her eyes become fixed on some object over there on her right. ‘What is it, Susan—a ghost?’ asks Dom, who is equal to most occasions. ‘No,’ says Susan, in a low voice. ‘But—this is the third time. And look over there, at that sycamore-tree in the Cottage garden. Do you see anything?’ ‘See what? “Is there visions about?” asks Dom. ‘Really, Susan, you ought to consider our nerves. Is it the “Bogie Man,” or—’ ‘It is a girl,’ says Susan. ‘There, there again! Her face is between those two big branches. Mr. Crosby’—eagerly—‘don’t you see her?’ ‘I do,’ cries Carew suddenly. ‘Oh, what a lovely face!’ It may be remembered that the Rectory and the Cottage are only divided by a narrow road and two high walls. At the farthest end of the Cottage grounds some tall trees are standing—a beech, two elms, and a sycamore. All these uprear themselves well above the walls, and cast their shadows in summer, and their leaves in winter, down on the road beneath. They can be distinctly seen from the Rectory tennis-court, and, indeed, add a good deal of charm to it, the road being so narrow, and the walls so much of a height, that strangers often think the trees on the Cottage lawn are actually belonging to the Rectory. ‘Yes, I see too,’ says Crosby, leaning forward. ‘Yes, yes!’ cries Betty. ‘But is it a girl?’ And now a little silence falls upon them. Over there, peeping out between the leaves of the soft sycamore-tree, is a face. There is nothing to tell if it be a boy’s or a girl’s face, as nothing can be seen but the shapely head; and its soft abundant tresses of chestnut hair are so closely drawn back into a knot behind that they are hidden by the crowding branches. The eyes are gleaming, the lips slightly parted. So might a Hamadryad look, peering through swaying leaves. ‘It’s the prisoner,’ says Jacky, in an awestruck tone.