“It may be,” said Aurora, gently, for the tears she was shedding had quenched all her anger. “It does not seem so to us, but then a poor child who cannot help fearing death a little, when she knows that the grave lies beyond all this, it may well trouble her.”
“The grave, Aurora!—what has driven you mad? The grave for you, my pretty wild bird? Nay, nay, leave this sort of nervousness to our fine ladies at home. Here it is pure nonsense.”
“Hush!” exclaimed my mother, and her eyes flashed like lightning as she turned them around the vast chamber. “That was a sound; surely I heard some one move.”
“I hear nothing,” said the young man, listening and speaking low. “It was a bat probably, flitting across the dome—these things are common, you know”——
“Yes, yes! but yonder the shadows are moving.”
“I see nothing!”
“But I did,” whispered the young girl, wildly, “I did!”
“It might have been something sweeping between the moonlight and the window,” suggested her companion, who, quite ignorant of any great danger in being watched, felt little anxiety about the matter.
“This was no cypress bough, no bat trying its wings in the night. Such movements are common here, but they do not chill one to the soul like this—see!”
The gipsy placed her little hands in those of the young man, and though she clasped her fingers hard together both her hands and arms trembled till they shook his.