“Wait here!” she cried. “What do you suppose I am waiting for? Nothing to say to me indeed!—I should think so! What should you have to say to me?”
“Madeline,” I exclaimed, stepping toward her, “let me explain.”
But she had gone.
Here was the end of the world for me! I turned fiercely to the ghost.
“Wretched existence!” I cried. “You have ruined everything. You have blackened my whole life. Had it not been for you——”
But here my voice faltered. I could say no more.
“You wrong me,” said the ghost. “I have not injured you. I have tried only to encourage and assist you, and it is your own folly that has done this mischief. But do not despair. Such mistakes as these can be explained. Keep up a brave heart. Good-by.”
And he vanished from the railing like a bursting soap-bubble.
I went gloomily to bed, but I saw no apparitions that night except those of despair and misery which my wretched thoughts called up. The words I had uttered had sounded to Madeline like the basest insult. Of course, there was only one interpretation she could put upon them.