He was staring at Flower with frightened eyes, as if she had been a ghost.
"My good man, I did not mean to startle you," Flower said, in her low voice, that sounded like saddest music. "I am looking for my mother's grave."
"Oh, my good Lord! this is surely her ghost!" gasped the sexton, retreating still further. "Oh, I told Mrs. Fielding it was a sin to do this, but she would not listen, she would have her way! It was a shame for me to obey her. And now I'm punished, for Daisy Forrest has come from her grave to look at me and reproach me!"
Some one touched his arm.
"Old man, you're daft. It's a living woman speaking to you."
"What, with that voice and that face?" muttered the old man, dubiously. He peered fearfully at Flower, and muttered, "If 'tain't her ghost, they're as like as two peas! Well, ma'am, and what is't you're wanting to know?"
"To find Daisy Forrest's grave," said the low, sad voice, with a pitiful tremor in its sweetness; and with that the old man took up his spade and struck it down into the open grave.
"This is where we buried her nigh onto eighteen years ago," he said, peering curiously into her startled face, as she cried out in horror:
"Why do you thus desecrate her grave, man?"
The sound of her indignant voice reached the veiled woman. She started as from a deep trance, and came hastily forward toward the little group that had collected about the grave.