Enid's nights were restless; but she had not been disturbed since Flossy's return from London by the white figure which she had seen at her bedside. She told herself that Maurice was right—that her nerves had played her false, and that the appearances had been a mere phantasm of her imagination. She quite lost her fear of seeing it again; and, although she had held no further conversation with the Rector after Mrs. Vane's arrival in the house, she was reassured and strengthened by the remembrance of his words. When she awoke in the night-time now, she knew no fear.
And yet—it was about three weeks after the beginning of Hubert Lepel's illness—her heart gave a wild leap when she opened her eyes one night, and saw in her room, by the faint light of a glimmering taper, the ghostly figure of a woman clothed from head to foot in white. She stood, not by the bedside, but by the mantelpiece, with something—was it a medicine-phial?—in her hand. What the visitant was doing Enid could not exactly see; but she started up, and at the movement the white woman turned and showed her face.
Enid uttered an exclamation—a sort of gasp of terror—for her worst fears were realised. The phantom which she had dreaded had come to her again in spite of Maurice's promises of aid. He had forgotten to pray for her perhaps—a childish notion crossed her mind that perhaps because of his forgetfulness the ghost was there.
But was it a ghost—a phantom of the senses, and not a living woman after all? For the face which met the girl's eyes was not one that she could easily mistake—it was the face of Florence Vane.
CHAPTER XLIII.
At that moment Enid recalled, by one instinctive flash of memory, the words that Maurice Evandale had said to her. If ever she saw "the ghost" again, she was to speak to it—she was not to be afraid. God would take care of her. With a sort of mental clutch at the strength residing in those words, she maintained herself in a sitting posture and looked the white woman full in the face. Yes, it was Flossy's face; but was it Flossy herself? For the figure made a strange threatening gesture, and glided smoothly towards the door as if to disappear—though in natural and not very ghost-like fashion, for the door stood wide open, and it was the soft cool night-breeze of summer that had opened Enid's slumbering eyes. In another moment the visitor would be gone, and Enid would never know whether what she saw was a reality or a dream.
That should not be. Strength and courage suddenly returned to her, inspired by the remembrance of her lover and his words, she would speak.
"Why are you here?" she said.
Still no answer. The figure glided onward, and its eyes—glittering and baleful—were never once removed from Enid's face. With one supreme effort, the girl sprang from the bed and threw herself in the strange visitor's way. The figure halted and drew back. Enid laid a hand upon its arm. Ah, yes, thank Heaven, she felt the touch of flesh and blood! No weird reflected image of a wandering brain was before her; a woman—only a wicked desperate woman—stood in her way. Enid was not afraid.