"The strange part of it is, that the argument does not seem to affect Tamsin as much as I should have fancied."
He paused for a moment, and added:
"Or to prove as conclusively as I should expect that I am a fool. Possibly if I see Geraldine to-morrow, she will prove it more satis—"
He broke off to clutch the lattice, and stare with rigid eyes across the creek.
For the moon was by this time high enough to fling a ray upon the deserted hull: and there—upon the deck—stood a figure—the figure of a woman.
She was motionless, and leant against the bulwarks, with her face towards him, but in black shadow. A dark hood covered her head; but the cloak was flung back, and revealed just a gleam of white where her bosom and shoulders bent forward over the schooner's side.
Mr. Fogo's heart gave a leap, stood still, and then fell to beating with frantic speed. He craned out at the window, straining his eyes. At the same moment the pipe dropped from his lips and tumbled, scattering a shower of sparks, into the rose-bush below.
When he looked up again the woman had disappeared.
Suddenly he remembered Caleb's story of the girl who, ages back, had left her home to live among the lepers in this very house, perhaps in the very room he occupied; and of the ghost that haunted the burial ground below. Mr. Fogo was not without courage; but the recollection brought a feeling of so many spiders creeping up his spine.
And yet the whole tale was so unlikely that, by degrees, as he gazed at the wreck, now completely bathed in moonlight, he began to persuade himself that his eyes had played him a trick.