So the summer days flew, and the happy lover was making all the preparations for the wedding.
It must be a grand affair, of course. Half the county would expect an invitation to the wedding of Lovelace Ellsworth, and he was not averse to having them witness his happiness.
The invitations were sent out two weeks beforehand. Dainty would never forget that day, because it was on that very night that the Ellsworth ghost reappeared to cast its lowering shadow again over her happiness.
It was quite a week since she had seen it, and Love had almost persuaded her that she had dreamed the whole thing, or that Sheila Kelly had probably played ghost to annoy her, when suddenly one night it reappeared more horribly than ever before, striking consternation to even the stout heart of old black mammy, who roused the whole house with her terrified shrieks, and filled Love Ellsworth's heart with rage at her graphic story.
CHAPTER XV.
BLACK MAMMY'S STORY.
In the dead waste and middle of the night, the sleeping household of Ellsworth was startled from repose by long, loud, wailing cries that rang through the wide corridors and vaulted roofs like the shrieks of some lost, despairing soul.
Instantly every sleeper was wide awake. Hurrying on scraps of outer clothing, they rushed from their rooms in wild alarm to the scene of disturbance.
On the floor at some distance from the half-open door lay Dainty Chase, clothed only in her night robes, her fair face upturned to the dim night light like the face of one dead, while over her bent the figure of old black mammy, grotesque in her red flannel petticoat, large-flowered calico sacque, and white turban, and pathetic in the grief with which she chafed Dainty's cold little hands, begging her to open her eyes and speak just one word to her poor old mammy.