But there came no answer. The wind moaned about the house, and the sea rumbled in the distance. She pulled the sash down again.
Then, leaving the curtain back, she turned again into the room, and partly to divert her mind from the mysterious apprehensions that had seized it, she sat down at the little harpsichord that stood on the farther side of the ingle against the wall that ran at right angles from the window.
At first her fingers ran nervously over the keys, but they gained force as she went on, and the volume of sound seemed to dissipate her fears.
"It is nothing," she thought. "I have been troubled about what Ewan said to-day, and I'm nervous—that is all."
And as she played her eyes looked not at the finger-board, but across her shoulder toward the bare window. Then suddenly there came to her a sensation that made her flesh creep. It was as if from the darkness outside there were eyes which she could not see looking steadily in upon her where she sat.
Her blood rushed to her head, she felt dizzy, the playing ceased, and she clung by one hand to the candle-rest of the harpsichord. Then once more she distinctly heard the same deep, tremulous voice call her by her name—"Mona! Mona!"
Faint and all but reeling, she rose again, and again made her way to the bedroom. As before, the child was restless in her sleep. It seemed as if all the air were charged. Mona had almost fallen from fright, when all at once she heard a sound that she could not mistake, and instantly she recovered some self-possession.
It was the sound of the window of her sitting-room being thrown open from without. She ran back, and saw Dan Mylrea climbing into the room.
"Dan!" she cried.
"Mona."