‘Isn’t it a lovely colour?’ she said, as it glistened in the moonlight.  ’Isn’t it just as beautiful and just as precious as if it were really made of the jewels it seems to rival?’

‘It is as red as the reddest ruby,’ I replied, putting out my hand and grasping the slippery substance.

‘Would you believe,’ said Winnie, ’that I never saw a ruby in my life?  And now I particularly want to know all about rubies.’

‘Why do you want particularly to know?’

‘Because,’ said Winifred, ’my father, when he wished me to come out for a walk, had been talking a great deal about rubies.’

‘Your father had been talking about rubies, Winifred—­how very odd!’

‘Yes,’ said Winifred, ‘and he talked about diamonds too.’

‘THE CURSE!’ I murmured, and clasped her to my breast.  ’Kiss me, Winifred!’

There had come a bite of sudden fire at my heart, and I shuddered with a dreadful knowledge, like the captain of an unarmed ship, who, while the unconscious landsmen on board are gaily scrutinising a sail that like a speck has appeared on the horizon, shudders with the knowledge of what the speck is, and hears in imagination the yells, and sees the knives, of the Lascar pirates just starting in pursuit.  As I took in the import of those innocent words, falling from Winifred’s bright lips, falling as unconsciously as water-drops over a coral reef in tropical seas alive with the eyes of a thousand sharks, my skin seemed to roughen with dread, and my hair began to stir.

At first she resisted my movement, but looking in my eyes and seeing that something had deeply disturbed me, she let me kiss her.  ’What did you say, Henry?’

‘That I love you so, Winnie, and cannot let you go just yet.’

‘What a dear fellow it is!’ she said; ’and all this ado about a poor girl with scarcely shoes to her feet.’  Then, after an instant’s pause, she said:  ’But I thought you said something very different.  I thought you said something about a curse, and that scared me.’

‘Scared Winifred!’ I said.  ’Fancy anything scaring Winnie, who threatens to hit people when they offend her.’

‘Ah! but I am scared,’ said she, ’at things from the other world, and especially at a curse.’

‘Why, what do you know about curses, Winifred?’

’Oh, a good deal.  I have never forgotten that shriek of a cursed spirit which I heard at the Swallow Falls.  And only a short time ago Sinfi Lovell nearly frightened me to death by a story of a whole Gypsy tribe having withered, one after the other—­grandfathers, fathers, and children—­through a dead man’s curse.  But what is the matter with you, Henry?  You surely have turned very pale!’

‘Well, Winnie,’ said I, ’I am a little, just a little faint.  After the funeral I could take no dinner.  But it will he over in a minute.  Let us go back a few yards and sit down upon the dry sand, and have a little more chat.’