Poor, nervous, shaken black mammy had been sent home to rest.
Dainty would not need any one, now that she had her ghost alarm, the young man said, smilingly; and every one understood his determination to protect his love at every hazard. The guilty party must have felt rather disconcerted at the turn affairs had taken.
Black mammy had not told any one yet that she had a clew by which she hoped to win the reward Love had offered for the detection of the impostor; but after she had grappled with the wretch who was bearing off Dainty, she had found in the claw-like grasp of her fingers some bits of torn torchon lace that might have been clutched forcibly from the sleeve of a night-dress.
She kept the fragments carefully, determining to find the garment they matched.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE WEDDING.
Apparently the Ellsworth ghost became disgusted with the prosaic means adapted to secure its identification.
From that horror-haunted night it ceased to invade Dainty's chamber with its grewsome cough and ghoulish presence.
It was true that in some of her occasional solitary moments, in some quiet twilight hour, she had been startled by the sound of that hateful cough, coming from apparently nowhere; but she fled at once in terror from the spot, and forebore to mention it to her lover, who was radiantly happy, deeming that the malicious ghost was exorcised forever.