CHAPTER IX.
A GAME FOR TWO TO PLAY AT.
A cold, raw, rainy, dismal morning—the sky black and hopeless of sunshine, the long bleak blasts complaining around the old house, and rattling ghostily the skeleton trees. The rain was more sleet than rain; for it froze as it fell, and clattered noisily against the blurred window-glass. A morning for hot coffee and muffins, and roaring fires and newspapers and easy-chairs, and in which you would not have the heart to turn your enemy's dog from the door.
Doctor Danton stood this wild and wintry February morning at his chamber window, looking out absently at the slanting sleet, not thinking of it—not thinking of the pale blank of wet mist shrouding the distant fields and marshes, and village and river, but of something that made him knit his brows in perplexed, reflection.
"What was it she saw last, night?" he mused. "No spectre of the imagination, and no bona-fide ghost. Old Margery saw something, and now Agnes. I wonder—"
He stopped, there was a knock at the door.
"Come in," he said, and Grace entered.
"I did not know you were up," said Grace. "But it is very fortunate as it happens. I have just been to Miss Darling's room, and she is crying out for you in the wildest Manner."
"Ah!" said her brother, rising, "has she been awake long?"
"Nearly an hour, Babette tells me, and all that time she has been frantically calling for you. Her manner is quite frenzied, and I fear—"