"It is Sybil, no doubt," she thought with a smile. "She is going to make me jump," and she waited, half expecting to feel Sybil's hands suddenly clasped over her eyes from behind.
But this was not to be the mode of attack, apparently, though she heard what sounded like stealthy footsteps.
"You need not try to startle me, Sybbie," she exclaimed laughingly, without turning or ceasing to play, "I hear you."
It was no laughing voice which replied.
On the contrary, a sigh, almost a groan, close to her made her look up sharply—a trifle indignant perhaps at the joke being carried so far—and she saw, a pace or two from her only, the figure of an old man—a white-haired, somewhat bent form, a worn face with wistful blue eyes—gazing at her.
She had scarcely time to feel frightened, for almost instantaneously Sybil's "ghost" recurred to her memory.
"He has found his way in, then," she thought, not without a slight and natural tremor, which, however, disappeared as she gazed, so pathetically gentle was the whole aspect of the intruder.
But—his face changed curiously—the sight of hers, now fully in his view, seemed strangely to affect him. With a gesture of utter bewilderment he raised his hand to his forehead as if to brush something away—the cloud still resting on his brain—then a smile broke over the old face, a wonderful smile.
"Marion," he said, "at last? I—I thought I was dreaming. I heard you playing in my dream. It is the right place though, 'Half-way between the stiles,' you said. I have waited so long and come so often, and now it is snowing again. Just a little, dear, nothing to hurt. Marion, my darling, why don't you speak? Is it all a dream—this fine room, the music and all? Are you a dream?"
He closed his eyes as if he were fainting. Inexpressibly touched, all Ellinor's womanly nature went out to him. She started forward, half leading, half lifting him to a seat close at hand.