"But you will tell us in the morning?" asked Edith.
"Yes," replied their hostess. "I will tell you then, whether you see anything or not, and very likely you will not. But if you want to have the creeps and would truly enjoy them, I'll tell you something that really happened to me once in Italy."
"Oh, do, do!" begged both girls in unison. "That would be simply perfect," added Edith, sitting up in bed, her fair hair floating about her shoulders and turning her more than ever into the likeness of an angel.
"Some years ago, when I was about your age," began Constance slowly, "Dad and Mother and I were traveling in southern Italy, and Max was with us. He was with us a great deal, you know. We stopped one night at an old hotel that had once been a monastery, though it was different from the usual monasteries because it was a place where sick monks came to be cured and to rest.
"The location was wonderful, on a cliff overlooking the sea and though the place had been altered for the purposes of a hotel, it was still a good bit churchly. The partitions between the cells had been knocked out and additions built, but the hotel dining-room was the old refectory with stone walls and floor, and the wonderful garden was much as the monks left it. Such roses you never saw and such climbing vines and flowering trees. Oh, there's no place like Italy!"
Constance stopped. The moonlight falling across her bed touched her face into almost unearthly beauty.
"We had connecting rooms that night," she went on. "Dad and Mother took the corner one with two beds. Next was a tiny room where I was to sleep and Max's was beyond mine. All were originally cells opening on a terrace, covered with roses and passion-flowers and looking down to the sea, which was shining with little silver ripples.
"We'd had an especially happy day and I was so keyed up with enjoyment that I couldn't go to sleep right away, but lay looking out at the flowers and the waves. Mother went through to see that Max was all right and then came back to kiss me. She closed the door into his room, but left open the one from mine into hers.
"I remember hearing Mother and Dad laugh a little about something and I suppose I went to sleep, because I woke very suddenly with a start, all awake in a minute."
Connie paused, this being the proper moment for a thrill. "What do you think I saw?" she asked impressively.