When she returned to her post after a brief nap on the wide couch, everything was quiet, much to her disgust.
"Why in the world doesn't Elinor loosen up?" she thought, impatiently.
As she moved nearer she gave a start of surprise. The lights in the night-life room were out. The transom showed black and empty above the massive folded doors.
Patricia drew in her breath with a gasp. She put her hand on the knob of the door and noiselessly turned it.
"I'll slip in behind the door screen," she thought, "and see what's going on. Elinor may need me."
CHAPTER V
THE GHOST DANCE
The room was very dark at first, and little whispers ran all about in the gloom. There was a rustling and shuffling and a sound of hurried, muffled steps. Patricia, from her hiding place behind the door screen, could make out nothing but the dim oblong of the transom above her head and the long pale mass of the skylight.
Suddenly a match flared and the twinkling tip of light grew at a candle end and she saw a ghostly figure, its white hand busy with the candle wick and its hollow, black eyes fixed on the tiny growing flame. Instantly other matches flickered and more candles glimmered in ghostly fingers, until the room was flashing with tiny points of light, while the masses of heavy shadow trembled and surged about an array of white-clad, mysterious, skull-faced figures that slowly formed in line and, two by two, moved to the center of the room, chanting a low, monotonous song as they walked in solemn procession.