Thomas Godolphin smiled. “I am sure you do not give ear to anything so foolish, Mrs. Verrall.”
“No, that I do not,” she answered. “It would take a great deal to imbue me with faith in the supernatural. Ghosts! Shadows! As if any one with common sense could believe in such impossibilities! They tell another tale about here, do they not? That a shadow of some sort may occasionally be seen in the moonbeams in front of the archway, on the Dark Plain; a shadow cast by no earthly substance. Charlotte once declared she saw it. I only laughed at her!”
His lips parted as he listened, and he lightly echoed the laugh said to have been given by Charlotte. Considering what his eyes had just seen, the laugh must have been a very conscious one.
“When do you expect your brother home?” asked Mrs. Verrall. “He seems to be making a long stay at Broomhead.”
“George is not at Broomhead,” replied Thomas Godolphin. “He left it three or four days ago. He has joined a party of friends in the Highlands. I do not suppose he will return here much before Christmas.”
Cecil appeared. They wished Mrs. Verrall good night, and a speedy cure to her burns; and departed. Thomas took the open roadway this time, which did not bring them near to the ash-trees or the Dark Plain.
CHAPTER XI.
A TELEGRAPHIC DESPATCH.
“Cecil,” asked Thomas Godolphin, as they walked along, “how came you to go alone to Ashlydyat, in this unceremonious manner?”
“There was no harm in it,” answered Cecil, who possessed a spice of self-will. “Mrs. Verrall said she was lonely, and it would be a charity if I or Bessy would go home with her. Bessy could not: she was engaged at the Rectory. Where was the harm?”
“My dear, had there been ‘harm,’ I am sure you would not have wished to go. There was none. Only, I do not care that you should become very intimate with the Verralls. A little visiting on either side cannot be avoided: but let it end there.”