Despite their efforts to sustain the interest of the conversation, they were obviously distrait, and had a proclivity to fall into sudden silences, and Mrs. Keene found them amazingly unresponsive and dull. Thus it was that she rose as if to retire for the night while the hour was still early. In fact, she intended to utilize the opportunity to have some dresses of the first mourning outfit tried on, for which the patient maid was now awaiting her.
"I leave you a charming substitute," she said in making her excuses. "Geraldine need not come in yet—it is not late."
Her withdrawal seemed to give a fresh impetus to some impulse with which Rigdon had been temporizing. He recurred to it at once. "You contemplate giving it to the public," he said to Gordon; "why not try its effect on a disinterested listener first, and judge from that?"
Gordon assented with an extreme gravity that surprised Geraldine; then Rigdon hesitated, evidently scarcely knowing how to begin. He looked vaguely at the moon riding high in the heavens above the long, broad expanse of the Mississippi and the darkling forests on either hand. Sometimes a shaft of light, a sudden luminous glister, betokened the motion of the currents gliding in the sheen. "Last night," he said in a tense, bated voice—"last night Mr. Gordon saw the phantom of Bogue Holauba. Stop! Hush!"—for the girl had sprung half screaming from her chair. "This is important." He laid his hand on her arm to detain her. "We want you to help us!"
"Help you! Why, you scare me to death!" She had paused, but stood trembling from head to foot.
"There is something explained in one of Mr. Keene's papers,—addressed to Mr. Gordon; and we have been much startled by the coincidence of his—his vision."
"Did he see—really——?" Geraldine had sunk back in her chair, her face ghastly pale.
"Of course it must be some illusion," said Rigdon. "The effect of the mist, perhaps——"
"Only, there was no mist," said Gordon.
"Perhaps a snag waving in the wind."