A shadow of disappointment passed over Syd's haughty face.
"No, if you do not do it once too often. I have known men—and women too—who all their lives through have been haunted by the memory of a slight word, a careless look, with which, unwittingly or in obstinacy, they shut the door of their own happiness. Have you ever heard of the Deerhurst ghost?"
"No," said Cecil, softly. "Tell it me."
"It is a short story. Do you know that picture of Muriel Vivian, the girl with the hawk on her wrist and long hair of your color? She lived in Charles's time, and was a great beauty at the court. There were many who would have lived and died for her, but the one who loved her best was her cousin Guy. The story says that she had plighted herself to him in these very woods; at any rate, he followed her when she went to join the court, and she kept him on, luring him with vague promises, and flirting with Goring, and Francis Egerton, and all the other gay gentlemen. One night his endurance broke down: he asked her whether or no she cared for him? He begged, as a sign, for the rosebud she had in her dress. She laughed at him, and—gave the flower to Harry Carrew, a young fellow in Lunsford's 'Babe-eaters.' Guy said no more, and left her. Before dawn he shot Carrew through the heart, took the rosebud from the boy's doublet, put it in his own breast, and fell upon his sword. They say Muriel lost her senses. I don't believe it: no coquette ever had so much feeling; but if you ask the old servants they will tell you, and firmly credit the story too, that hers and Guy Vivian's ghosts still are to be seen every midnight at Christmas-eve, the day that he fought and killed little Harry Carrew."
He laughed, but Cecil shuddered.
"What a horrible story! But do you believe that any woman ever possessed such power over a man?"
"I believe it since I have seen it. One of my best friends is now hopelessly insane because a woman as worthless as this dead branch forsook him. Poor fellow! they set it down to a coup de soleil, but it was the falsehood of Emily Rushbrooke that did it. But, for myself, I never should lose my head for any woman. I did once when I was a boy, but I know better now."
A wild, desperate idea came into Cecil's mind. She contrasted the passionless calm of his face with the tender gentleness of his tone a few moments ago, and she would have given her life to see him "lose his head for her" as he had done for that other. How she hated her, whoever she had been! Cecil had seen too many men not to know that Syd's cool exterior covered a stormy heart, and in the longing to rouse up the storm at her incantation she resolved to play a dangerous game. The ghost story did not warn her. As Mephistopheles to Faust came Horace Cos to aid the impulse, and Cecil turned to him with one of her radiant smiles. She never looked prettier than in her black hat; the wind had only blown a bright flush into her cheeks—though it had turned Laura blue and the Screechington red—and the Colonel looked up at her as he put her skates on with something of the look Guy might have given Muriel Vivian flirting gaily with the roistering cavaliers.
"Now, Sir Horace, show us some of those wonderful Serpentine figures," cried Cecil, balancing herself with the grace of a curlew, and whirling here, there, and everywhere at her will as easily as if she were on a chalked ball-room floor. She hadn't skated and sledged on the Ontario for nothing. More than one man had lost his own balance looking after her. Cos wasn't started yet; one pair of skates were too large, another pair too small; if he'd thought of it he'd have had his own sent over. He stood on the brink much as Winkle, of Pickwickian memory, trembled in Weller's grasp. Cecil looked at him with laughing eyes, a shrewd suspicion that he had planted her adorer, and that the quadrille on the Serpentine was an offspring of the Cossetting poetic fancy. Thrice did the luckless baronet essay the ice, and thrice did he come to grief with heels in the air, and his dainty apparel disordered. At last, his Canadian sorceress took compassion upon him, and declaring she was tired, asked him to drive her across the pond. Cos, with an air of languid martyrdom and a heavy sigh as he glanced at his Houbigants, torn and soiled, grasped the back of the chair, and actually contrived to start it. Once started, away went the chair and its Phaeton after it, whether he would or no, its occupant looking up and laughing in the dandy's heated, disconcerted, and anxious face. All at once there was a crash, a plunge, and a shout from Vivian, who was on the opposite bank. The chair had broken the ice, flung Cecil out into the water with the shock, while her charioteer, by a lucky jump backwards, had saved himself, and stood on the brink of the chasm unharmed. Cecil's crinoline kept her from sinking; she stretched out her little hand with a cry—it sounded like Vivian's name as it came to my ears on the keen north wind—but before Vivian, who came across the ice like a whirlwind, could get to her, Cos, valorously determining to wet his wristbands, stooped down, and, holding by the chair, which was firmly wedged in, put his arm round her and dragged her out. Vivian came up two seconds too late.
"Are you hurt?" he said, bending towards her.