After dishevelled Jane had vanished again into the powdering closet whence she had first emerged, the lady of the banished portrait moved over to Patricia and her lover. Standing side by side the resemblance between the two women was remarkable. One was the budding flower; the other the fragile shadow of a beautiful life.
"Her kind will always exist," she said. "They marry for pearl powders and other vanities, and usually seek, or are forced into, a gilded cage. There, like jackdaws, they call out their possessions from dawn till night, and the heedless world passing by sees the sparkling of the gold, mistakes the caws for singing, and applauds. I knew love—the ideal love that smiles at one from the wayside when one is seeking it in the well-kept gardens. I paid for it with my heart's blood, and I never had cause to regret. Over the rough places of my earthly journey it followed me with radiant illusions. The April winds were sweeter, the sunshine on the roads warmer. I felt all the raptures mother nature gives her children. That is why I could leave the other world to do you this service. Love is the one thing death cannot lull to sleep!"
Patricia tried to answer, but the power of speech had left her for the moment. Juma's face was glowing with peaceful smiles. He bent low on his right knee to kiss the diaphanous draperies of the shade.
Outside in the night there arose the low murmurous chanting of the town waits moving homeward. A chime of bells, as soft as a blessing. The thorns had fallen from the brows of love.
While Patricia's benefactress gave her message the circle of ghosts was making way for the other Knickerbockers to enter. On closer inspection, many of them proved to be tame sort of animals enough. From a distance one monster of a woman had given the impression that she was trying to bully posterity. Perhaps this was due to the long feathers in her head-dress, that nodded maliciously at her most placid motion. As she bowed to her descendants a plume tickled the tip of Jonathan's nose and he jumped back slightly. "I am Melodia Mudford Makemie," she said, "and I thought you would like to meet me, as I started the Christmas fashion of giving hot-bag covers in York."
"Hot-bag covers!" reiterated Miss Georgina, astonished. "I have always said mittens. Why, in my ancestry book it is noted that in the year 1768 you gave one hundred pairs of silk mittens to Gruel Hall, the home for tiresome gentlewomen."
"The years play great hoaxes," chuckled the ghost. "Those ancestry books are a standard joke with us, and I believe they are looked upon with some suspicion in your own world."
Melodia seemed so friendly, Julie gained courage enough to purse up her lips for a speech, but the shade anticipated her.