"Oh, Mrs. Boyd!" Virginia groaned, as she tottered to the step and raised her eyes to the old woman's face, "you haven't heard the news. Luke is dead!"
"Dead?" Ann laughed out impulsively. "Oh no, I reckon not. Come in and take a chair by the fire; you've got your feet wet with the dew."
"He's dead, he's dead, I tell you!" Virginia stood still, her white and rigid face upturned. "Langdon Chester, the contemptible coward, shot him at Darley this morning."
"Oh, that's it, is it?" A knowing look came into Ann Boyd's face. She stroked an impulsive smile from her facile lips, but Virginia still saw its light in the twinkling eyes above the broad, red hand. "You say he's dead? Well, well, that accounts for something I was wondering about just now. You know I am not much of a hand to believe in spiritual manifestations like table-raising folks do, but I'll give you my word, Virginia, that for the last hour and a half I'd 'a' sworn Luke King himself was right here in the house. Just now I heard something like him walking across the floor. It seemed to me he went out to the shelf and took a drink of water. I'll bet it's Luke's spirit hanging about trying to tell me good-bye—that is, if he really was shot, as you say." Ann smiled again and turned her face towards the inside of the room, and called out: "Say, Ghost of Luke King, if you are in my house right now you'd better lie low and listen. This silly girl is talking so wild the first thing you know she will be saying she don't love Langdon Chester."
"Love him? what's the matter with you?" Virginia panted. "I hate him. You know I detest him. I'll kill him. Do you hear me? I'll kill him as sure as I ever meet him face to face."
Ann stared at the girl for a moment, her face oddly beaming, then she looked back into the room again. "Do you hear that, Mr. Ghost? She now says she'll kill Langdon Chester on sight. She says that after sending you about your business for no reason in the world. You listen good. Maybe she'll be saying after a while that she loved you."
"I did love him. God knows I loved him!" Virginia cried. "I loved him with every bit of my soul and body. I've loved him, worshipped him, adored him ever since I was a child and he was so good to me. He was the noblest man that ever lived, and now a dirty, sneaking coward has slipped up on him and shot him down in cold blood. If I ever meet that man, as God is my Judge, I'll—" With a sob that was almost a shriek Virginia sank to the door-step and lay there, quivering convulsively.
A vast change swept over Ann Boyd. Her big face filled with the still blood of deep emotion. She heaved a sigh, and, turning towards the interior of the room, she said, huskily:
"Come on, Luke; don't tease the poor little thing. I wouldn't have carried it so far if I could have got it out of her any other way. She's yours, dear boy—heart, soul, and body."
Hearing these words, Virginia raised her head in wonder, just as Luke King emerged from the house. He bent over her, and tenderly raised her up. He was drawing her closer to him, his fine face aflame with tender passion, when Virginia held him firmly from her.