Grace kept her station at the door watching for Kate. In another half hour she appeared, slightly pale, but otherwise tranquil. She was surrounded immediately by sundry "ginger-whiskered fellows," otherwise the officers from Montreal, and lost to the housekeeper's view.
The house-warming was a success. Somewhere in the big, busy world perhaps, crime, and misery, and shame, and sorrow, and starvation, and all the catalogue of earthly horrors, were rife, but not at Danton Hall. Time trod on flowers; enchanted music drifted the bright hours away; the golden side of life was uppermost; and if those gay dancers knew what tears and trouble meant, their faces never showed it. Kate, with her tranquil and commanding beauty, wore a face as serene as a summer's sky; and her father playing whist, was laughing until all around laughed in sympathy. No, there could be no hidden skeleton, or the masks those wore who knew of its grisly presence were something wonderful.
In the black and bitterly cold dawn of early morning the dancers went shivering home. The first train bore the city guests, blue and fagged, to Montreal; and Doctor Frank walked briskly through the piercing air over the frozen snow to his hotel. And up in her room old Margery lay in disturbed sleep, watched over by dozing Babette, and moaning out at restless intervals.
"Master Harry! Master Harry! O Miss Kate! it was Master Harry's ghost!"
CHAPTER VI.
ROSE'S ADVENTURE.
December wore out in wild snow-storms and wintry winds. Christmas came, solemn and shrouded in white; and Kate Danton's fair hands decorated the little village church with evergreens and white roses for Father Francis; and Kate Danton's sweet voice sang the dear old "Adeste Fideles" on Christmas morning. Kate Danton, too, with the princely spirit that nature and habit had given her, made glad the cottages of the poor with gifts of big turkeys, and woolly blankets, and barrels of flour. They half adored, these poor people, the stately young lady, with the noble and lovely face, so unlike anything St. Croix had ever seen before. Proud as she was, she was never proud with them—God's poor ones; she was never proud when she knelt in their midst, in that lowly little church, and cried "Mea culpa" as humbly as the lowliest sinner there.
New-Year came with its festivities, bringing many callers from Montreal, and passed; and Danton Hall fell into its customary tranquillity once more. Sir Ronald Keith was still their guest; Doctor Frank was still an inmate of the St. Croix Hotel, and a regular visitor at the Hall. More letters had come for Kate from England; Lieutenant Stanford's regiment had gone to Ireland, and he said nothing of leave of absence or a visit to Canada. Rose got weekly epistles from Ottawa; her darling Jules poured out floods of undying love in the very best French, and Rose smiled over them complacently, and went down and made eyes at Doctor Frank all the evening. And old Margery was not recovered yet from the ghost-seeing fright, and would not remain an instant alone by night or day for untold gold.
The sunset of a bright January day was turning the western windows of Danton Hall to sheets of beaten gold. The long, red lances of light pierced through the black trees, tinged the piled up snow-drifts, and made the low evening sky one blaze of crimson splendour. Eeny stood looking thoughtfully out at the gorgeous hues of the wintry sunset and the still landscape, where no living thing moved. She was in a cozy little room called the housekeeper's room, but which Grace never used, except when she made up her accounts, or when her favourite apartment, the dining-room, was occupied. A bright fire burned in the grate, and the curtained windows and carpeted floor were the picture of comfort. It had been used latterly as a sewing-room, and Agnes Darling sat at the other window embroidering a handkerchief for Rose. There had been a long silence—the seamstress never talked much; and Eeny was off in a daydream. Presently, a big dog came bounding tumultuously up the avenue, and a tall man in an overcoat followed leisurely.