About this time, Hugh Montfort, having said good night to his uncle and the two Merryweathers, sauntered down the garden walk, for one more turn, one more look at the night. It was a wonderful night. The moon was full, and Fernley lay bathed in a flood of silver light, that seemed to transform the old brown house into a fairy palace, stately and splendid. There was no wind, and no sound broke the stillness; yes, it might well be an enchanted palace, where every living thing lay fast bound by some mighty spell. The leaves drooped motionless from the branches; beyond the dark masses of trees, the broad lawns lay in green and silver.
"It's more like something Greek!" said Hugh. "Tempe, or some such place. If a dryad, now, were to come out from that great tulip-tree—good heavens!"
He stopped short, in the deep shadow of a clump of chestnut-trees. Something moved, behind the very tree he was looking at. A figure came lightly out into the open; a woman's figure, slight and supple, clad in shadowy white. A dryad? No! the girl he had seen in the summer-house. He knew the face, as it shone upturned in the moonlight; knew the firm mouth and chin, the blue eyes, the look of careless power; seen once only, it was as if he had known the face all his life.
What was she doing? A smile lighted her grave eyes suddenly. She extended her arms, her face still raised to the moon. Her whole figure, light as thistle-down, began to sway, to drift hither and thither over the silver-green lawn. Dancing, was she? It was no human dance, surely; the name was too common for this marvel of motion. A wave cresting and curling toward its break; a cloud blown lightly along a summer sky by a gentle wind; a field of grain, bending and rippling under the same wind. Hugh thought of all these things, and rejected each in turn, as unworthy of comparison to this, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He watched her, as if in a dream of delight; each moment it seemed that he must wake, and find the lovely vision gone. It was too rare, too perfect to be real. It seemed as if all the moonlight in the world were drawn to this one spot, to shine on that white figure, dancing, swaying, hither and thither—
Ah! it was over. She stopped; threw, it seemed, some words upward toward the moon, accompanying them with a wave of her hand. Then she turned away, and passed slowly out of sight, under the dark trees. As she went, she began to sing; softly at first, a mere breath of sound; but as she passed farther and farther on, her song rang out clear and sweet; the voice and the song that he had heard the night before, in the field beyond the wall:
"Trois anges sont venus ce soir,
M'apportaient de bien belles choses!"