One evening Cecil was sitting alone in her own room, and, being very tired after a long day at the hospital, dropped asleep in her chair. She awoke with a feeling of deadly chilliness. The moon was shining into the room, and the figure of Bertie Du Meresq, keen clearly by its rays, was standing quietly gazing at her.
"Bertie!" shrieked Cecil "Oh, when did you come?"—and she tried to rush forward to greet him, but her limbs seemed paralyzed, and he did not move either, though a sad, sweet smile seemed to pass over his face. Was it himself, or only a quivering moonbeam? for when she was able to move there was nothing else to be seen.
A ghost itself could not have been whiter than Cecil, as she fled to the drawing room, and almost inarticulately described what she had beheld.
The very horror it inspired made Mrs. Rolleston repel the ghastly idea almost angrily.
"Good heavens, Cecil, why do you frighten me so! You had fallen asleep, and were dreaming. You say yourself," and she shuddered, "it was gone when you awoke."
"You know," said the girl, not apparently attending, "I have never seen Bertie in uniform, but this is what he wore," (describing the dress of the —— Hussars), "and his tunic was torn."
"That is too absurd, Cecil. All Hussar uniforms are more or less alike, and you must have seen many. It is this dreadful idea of going to Scutari that has filled your mind with horrors, and hospital work here has been too much for you, and told on your nerves."
But Cecil sat unheeding, as if turned to stone, with such a grey look of despair on her face, that Mrs. Rolleston longed to rouse her in any way.
"Forgive me, Cecil," she cried; "you do care for poor Bertie, I see."
She looked up with a vague, uncomprehending glance.