The girl, supported by the man to whom she was giving her young life, and followed by the trembling negro, crept slowly away.
Whiffs of air increasing to a current swept from out the hall. The remaining lights fought with it—then despaired. A tired moon was slumbering behind the western pines, and only the glow of a few watchful stars dripped through the casements.
Simultaneously the breaths of every one in the room came faster and faster. Vapors wan and tinged with dust filled the atmosphere, and an unmistakable odor of sandal-wood, faint from long imprisonment.
The startled Knickerbockers retreated to the walls, knocking over chairs and tables in their flight. Before the green sarcenet curtain which had played such a part in the affairs of the night there was a waft of airy garments. A white weft of towering hair—black, burning eyes. Three Knickerbockers knew them! The lady of the banished portrait was moving through the doorway and speaking in quaint last-century utterance.
"Come back!" she called to the lovers, speaking to Patricia. "'Tis a weary while I have been in the other world, but your sore need has brought me here on the anniversary of the birth of love. I am your great-great-grandmother, who felt the full force of the pretty passion and stole away with my dear heart from yonder theatre in old John Street—a grain house in your time, so one from York who recently joined us informed me.
"The lady of the banished portrait was moving through the doorway"
"Although my likeness does not hang in the family line, I bear you small malice. I get a surfeit of their society." Here the ghost sighed, and with the saddest air possible tapped her empty snuffbox and went through the act of inhaling a reviving pinch of strong Spanish. "This girl who has the bloom of me I would befriend, and as the greatness of your ancestors is all that stands in the way of a marriage with the man of her choice, I have bid them come to meet you and get their opinions, mayhap."
A tremor went through the room! More unearthly visitants? The flesh was creeping on the bones of all the living Knickerbockers!