Over there, peeping out between the leaves of the soft sycamore-tree, is a face. There is nothing to tell if it be a boy’s or a girl’s face, as nothing can be seen but the shapely head; and its soft abundant tresses of chestnut hair are so closely drawn back into a knot behind that they are hidden by the crowding branches. The eyes are gleaming, the lips slightly parted. So might a Hamadryad look, peering through swaying leaves.
‘It’s the prisoner,’ says Jacky, in an awestruck tone.
‘The apparition, you mean,’ corrects Mr. Fitzgerald severely. ‘Prisoners, as a rule, have bodies, spooks have none. Jacky, you lucky creature, you have seen a ghost.’
‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ asks Betty in an anxious tone.
‘A most pertinent question?’ says Fitzgerald, who is taking the situation with anything but the seriousness that is so evidently demanded of it. ‘But, as I have before remarked, there is no body to go by, and naturally no clothes. It is therefore unanswerable.’
Crosby has said nothing. He is, indeed, deeply occupied with the face. So this is Wyndham’s tenant. A very lovely one.
Again a slight doubt arises in his mind about his friend. And yet Wyndham had seemed thoroughly honest in his explanation.
‘I know it’s a girl,’ says Susan, with decision. ‘Jacky has seen her; and what a pretty one! Oh, there, she’s gone!’ And, indeed, the Hamadryad, as if becoming suddenly conscious of the fact that they are looking at her, draws back her head and disappears. ‘I’m afraid she saw us,’ says Susan contritely. ‘She must have thought us very rude. I’ll ask father to let me call on her, I think. She must be very lonely there. And even if she is only Mrs. Moriarty’s niece, still, she must have been educated to make her look like that.’
‘Perhaps,’ says Crosby, speaking with apparent carelessness, and looking direct at Susan, ‘she might not like to be called upon. I have been given to understand that she is not a niece of Mrs. Moriarty’s, and—’
‘No, but what, then?’ asks Carew.