“I have found out another mystery,” Euphra resumed, after a pause.
“I am sorry to hear it,” answered he. “I fear there will be no mysteries left by-and-by.”
“No fear of that,” she rejoined, “so long as the angels come down to men.” And she turned towards Margaret as she spoke.
Margaret smiled. In the compliment she felt only the kindness.
Hugh looked at her. She turned away, and found something to do at the other side of the room.
“What mystery, then, have you destroyed?”
“Not destroyed it; for the mystery of courage remains. I was the wicked ghost that night in the Ghost’s Walk, you know—the white one: there is the good ghost, the nun, the black one.”
“Who? Margaret?”
“Yes, indeed. She has just been confessing it to me. I had my two angels, as one whose fate was undetermined; my evil angel in the count—my good angel in Margaret. Little did I think then that the holy powers were watching me in her. I knew the evil one; I knew nothing of the good. I suppose it is so with a great many people.”
Hugh sat silent in astonishment. Margaret, then, had been at Arnstead with Mrs. Elton all the time. It was herself he had seen in the study.