From where Elizabeth stood she could look out over the withered flower-beds and into the thicket beyond.
Suddenly her eye caught sight of a man standing under the cypress tree, which rose up gloomy and dark, its branches waving slowly to and fro, looking, to her excited fancy like spectral hands that beckoned her forth to her doom.
She uttered a faint sound and strained her eyes towards it with a chill feeling of horror. Elsie was roused again by the noise, and asked, quickly:
"What is the matter?"
"Nothing, nothing."
"What made you groan, then?"
"I am looking out," returned Elizabeth, in a low voice, leaning more heavily against the window for support, "he is there!"
"Come away, come away!" cried Elsie, muffling her face more closely in her shawl, as if to shut out some dreadful object. "Come back to the fire, Elizabeth, do!"
"Surely, if I can go out there to meet him," she said, "I have courage enough to look at the old tree."
Elsie only groaned anew. She sat upright and rested herself against the chair her sister had left.