Part 21 (1/2)

”Rob!” protested Beth.

”We know it already,” I laughed. ”It's to be a story-and-a-half high.”

”I think I am getting material for quite a story,” declared Miss Frayne.

I knew Beth's dislike of scenes and display of emotions--mock heroics--she called them, so I made no congratulatory speeches of the bless-you-my-children order, but presently under the cover of darkness, I felt a little hand slipped in mine, and my clasp was eloquent of what I felt.

”I hope,” said Miss Frayne, ”that daylight will make me so ashamed of my cowardice that I can come down here and take some pictures and go inside the house.”

”We'll all come with you,” promised Beth. ”There's safety in numbers.”

When we were back at the hotel I managed to have a few words with Rob before we went upstairs.

”Bless the ghost!” he said cheerily. ”When Beth first glimpsed it, she just turned and fell into my arms. She was really frightened for the first time. I shall feel under obligations to Ptolemy for a lifetime.”

”Thank goodness!” I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed fervently, ”that I am under no obligations to a Polydore. Ptolemy certainly did put up the most ghastly thing in the way of ghosts. The lights in the eyes of the skeleton were frightful.”

”Did you see the ghost?” asked Silvia sleepily, when I came in.

”Yes; same old ghost, only more of him,” I a.s.sured her.

She was asleep before I had uttered this reply.

”Silvia,” I said, ”I have a more startling piece of news for you than that.”

She sat bolt upright.

”Are they engaged, Lucien?”

”They are. They are building their castle--I mean their story-and-a-half cottage already.”

Alas for my own desire to sleep! I had so effectually awakened Silvia that she planned Beth's trousseau, the wedding, honeymoon, and the furnis.h.i.+ng of their house before she subsided.

CHAPTER XV

_What Miss Frayne Found Out_

We had planned to go to the haunted house at nine o'clock the next morning, but owing to my dissipation of the night before, it was long after the appointed hour when Silvia awoke me.

I hurried down stairs and ate my breakfast in solitude. I inquired for Beth and Rob, but the waitress told me they had left the dining-room at seven o'clock and gone for a walk in the woods. She said it with a knowing smile that told me she, too, must be a ”sister of the Golden Circle.”

”And Miss Frayne?” I asked.

”She went down the road over an hour ago.”

Evidently her courage had come up with the sun. I was greatly disturbed at the chance of her stumbling over one or more Polydores, and Rob didn't want to let the cat out of the bag until her article was written, as he believed that if the ghostly spell were broken, she would lose her ”punch.”

I was unable to think of any plausible explanation to offer Silvia as to why I should start in pursuit, and I wished all sorts of dire calamities on Rob's blond head. Lovers were surely blind and selfish.