"Oh! fancy a ghost standing on his head!" she says, when she can speak.
"I shouldn't fancy it at all," says Mr. Kelly, gloomily. "I won't. Far from it. And I should advise you, Miss Beresford, to treat with less frivolity a subject so fraught with terror,—especially at this time of night. If that 'grand old man' were to appear now," with a shuddering glance behind him, "what would become of us all?"
"An unpleasant idea!" says Miss Browne,—"so unpleasant, indeed, that I think I should like to go for a little walk somewhere,—anywhere, away from the scene of the late Mr. O'Connor's nightly visitations."
"Come to the end of the shrubbery, then," says Desmond, "and look at the sea. It should be worth the trouble on such a night as this. Come you too, Olga."
"I should like it, but my head aches so," says Mrs. Bohun, plaintively. And, indeed, she is very pale. "It is either the moonlight which oppresses me, or—I don't know what. No! I shall go indoors, I think."
"Then I shall go with you," says Mrs. Herrick, regarding her with a certain anxiety. "But you," turning to Mary Browne, "must not miss a glimpse of the coast by moonlight. Mr. Kelly will show it to you."
She slips her arm through Olga's, and turns towards the house; Ulic Ronayne accompanies them; but Lord Rossmoyne and Owen Kelly move in the contrary direction with Miss Browne. Monica and Desmond have gone on before; and even when the others arrive at the point in the shrubbery from which a glimpse of the ocean can be distinctly seen, these last two people are not to be discovered anywhere.
Yet they are not so distant as they seem. Desmond has led Monica to a rather higher spot, where the desired scene can be more vividly beheld, and where too they can be—oh, blessed thought!—alone.
Through a belt of dark-green fir-trees, whose pale tips are touched with silver by the moon, can be seen the limitless ocean, lying in restless waiting in the bay below.
A sort of enforced tranquillity has fallen upon it,—a troubled calm,—belied by the hoarse, sullen roar that rises now and again from its depths, as when some larger death-wave breaks its bounds, and, rushing inland, rolls with angry violence up the beach. Soft white crests lie upon the great sea's bosom, tossing idly hither and thither, glinting and trembling beneath the moon's rays, as though reluctantly subdued by its cold influence.