Louise looked greatly distressed.
“Dear Celia,” she said, “I wish you wouldn’t take it that way. I feel quite differently about it. I look upon the White Weeper as a kind of protector—a living spirit who wants to keep harm from us.”
“Do you?” said Celia, rather grimly. “Well, then, I’m afraid I’m like the boy who, when he was told he need not mind the dark, as his guardian angel was always beside him, replied that that was just what he was ‘afeared on.’ I don’t know if I’ve a bad conscience—compared with yours, I daresay I have—but I know that I devoutly trust I shall never be favoured with the sight of our family ghost. Do you mean to say, Louise, that you would have courage to speak to her?”
Louise hesitated.
“I don’t know,” she said, “I hope I would. Yes, I think I would if it were to be for good to any of those I love.”
“I do believe you would. You are an angel;” and she drew Louise’s wavy brown head down to her, as the elder girl was turning to leave her, and kissed her tenderly.
The door was left open—wide open—that night between their rooms, but the sisters’ slumbers were undisturbed. Louise was too happy to know that Celia was beside her again to think of anything else, even if she had been given to ghostly fears, which she certainly was not.
And Celia was happy too, though tired—happy to be at home again, and to feel that Louise and she understood each other so thoroughly.
The next morning brought about the “long talk” between Winifred and her mother. It was not so very long after all, for the same ground had been gone over so often that there was not much new to say. And when Mrs Maryon became convinced that the visit to London had only intensified her daughter’s determination—had, indeed, practically resulted in Winifred’s taking upon herself engagements which it would have been scarcely honourable to break—she had the wisdom to accept the position, and not to add bitterness to the whole by further and useless discussion.