"I have been ill now for a long while; I must have been ill when I knew you," she said; "that is, the disease was within me, but I did not suspect it. Had I taken heed of the symptoms, slight though they were and for that cause entirely unheeded, perhaps something might have been done for me; I don't know. As it is, I am slowly dying." "I hope not," he said, in his humanity. "You cannot hope it, Mr. Hunter. Look at me!" Very true. Had she been all the world to him--had his whole happiness depended on his keeping her in life, he could not have hoped it. With her wan face, and eyes glistening with that peculiar glaze that tells of coming death; with her thin frame and deep, quick breath, that seemed to heave the body of her gown as though a furnace-bellows were underneath, there could be no thought of escape from the portals that were opening for her. As she sat before him leaning in the chair, the shawl thrown back from her chest, Robert Hunter looked at her and knew it. There ensued a silence. He did not answer, and Mary Anne was much wondering at this suddenly-discovered past intimacy, never spoken of by either to her, and resenting it after the manner of women. The fire flickered its blaze aloft; the twilight deepened; but it was not yet so dark but that the plateau was distinct, and also the figure of the preventive man at the edge, pacing it. Lady Ellis suddenly broke the stillness. "Do the people believe in the ghost still, Mary Anne?" "I suppose so. There has been no change that I know of." "I meant--has anything been discovered?" Mary Anne Thornycroft lifted her eyes. "How do you mean, discovered? What is there to discover?" "Not anything, I dare say," she said. "But it used to strike me as very singular--this superstitious belief in these enlightened times--and a feeling was always on my mind that something would occur to explain it away. Have you heard of it?" she asked, directing her eyes to Robert Hunter. "Somewhat. There is a difficulty, I hear, in keeping the preventive men on the plateau after dusk. What it is they precisely fear, I do not know." "Neither did I ever know," she observed, dreamily. "The curious part of it to me always was, that Mr. Thornycroft and his sons appeared to fear it." Before Miss Thornycroft, who sat in silence, the subject was not pursued. Lady Ellis started a more open one, and inquired after Mrs. Chester. "She is living in Paris," said Robert Hunter. "At least--she has been living there; but I am not sure that she is still. A few days ago I had a letter from her, in which she said she was about to change her residence to Brussels."