When Euphra recovered from the swoon into which she had fallen—for I need hardly explain to my readers, that it was she who walked the Ghost’s Walk in white—on seeing Margaret, whom, under the irresistible influences of the moonlight and a bad conscience, she took for the very being whom Euphra herself was personating—when she recovered, I say, she found herself lying in the wood, with Funkelstein, whom she had gone to meet, standing beside her. Her first words were of anger, as she tried to rise, and found she could not.
“How long, Count Halkar, am I to be your slave?”
“Till you have learned to submit.”
“Have I not done all I can?”
“You have not found it. You are free from the moment you place that ring, belonging to me, in right of my family, into my hands.”
I do not believe that the man really was Count Halkar, although he had evidently persuaded Euphra that such was his name and title. I think it much more probable that, in the course of picking up a mass of trifling information about various families of distinction, for which his position of secretary in several of their houses had afforded him special facilities, he had learned something about the Halkar family, and this particular ring, of which, for some reason or other, he wanted to possess himself.
“What more can I do?” moaned Euphra, succeeding at length in raising herself to a sitting posture, and leaning thus against a tree. “I shall be found out some day. I have been already seen wandering through the house at midnight, with the heart of a thief. I hate you, Count Halkar!”
A low laugh was the count’s only reply.
“And now Lady Euphrasia herself dogs my steps, to keep me from the ring.” She gave a low cry of agony at the remembrance.
“Miss Cameron—Euphra—are you going to give way to such folly?”