Harrison may have hoped that the shock of his voice, and, perhaps, of his determinedly sceptical attitude, would have exorcised the phantom that was assuredly, so he had already decided, the creation of a moment’s excited imagination. But when he turned back to face the plantation, the pale figure still stood in the same attitude, and seemed now, moreover, to have attained a sharper definition of outline; to be altogether more human and solid.
“By Jove, you know, it is someone, after all,” Harrison murmured.
“Oh! it is someone, right enough,” Fell said, at present concerned only with the fact that it was not the right someone.
“Oh! Well!” Harrison softly ejaculated, as one who braces himself to an encounter.
He stepped forward a couple of paces with a slightly grotesque air of greeting. “Hm! hm! I don’t quite know ...” he said; “that is, might I ask whom we have the pleasure of—of meeting so unexpectedly?”
The frozen intensity of the silence that appeared to follow his question may have been due to the fact that each member of the party was holding his or her breath in the expectation of the moment.
The figure moved. Slowly and with an almost painful deliberation she released the ends of the tulle scarf that was about her head and shoulders, and let her hands fall to her sides. Her mouth opened, but she did not speak; and after what might have been another effort to reply—a just perceptible movement of the head—she took a careful step backward, entering again the shadow of the yews.
“But, I say, you know....” Harrison began.
She interrupted him with a gesture, raising her hand and pointing with an unmistakable certainty at Lady Ulrica. And the hand and forearm that by this gesture she once more plunged into the moonlight had something the appearance of opalescent glass.
Harrison, standing with his back to the house-party, did not understand this indication and turned his head to see who or what had been selected for peculiar notice; but Lady Ulrica responded with a fine dignity. She came forward past Harrison right up to the edge of the yews, and said in a voice that did credit to her breeding: