he saw it.  It made no sound.  Only some early-fallen leaves rustled as they hurried away in uncertain eddies, startled by the sweep of its trailing garments, which yet were held up by hands hidden within them.  On it went.  Hugh’s eyes were fixed on its course.  He could not move, and his heart laboured so frightfully that he could hardly breathe.  The figure had not advanced far, however, before he heard a repressed cry of agony, and it sank to the earth, and vanished; while from where it disappeared, down the path, came, silently too, turning neither to the right nor the left, a second figure, veiled in black from head to foot.

“It is the nun in Lady Euphrasia’s room,” said Hugh to himself.

This passed him too, and, walking slowly towards the house, disappeared somewhere, near the end of the avenue.  Turning once more, with reviving courage —­ for his blood had begun to flow more equably —­ Hugh ventured to approach the spot where the white figure had vanished.  He found nothing there but the shadow of a huge tree.  He walked through the avenue to the end, and then back to the house, but saw nothing; though he often started at fancied appearances.  Sorely bewildered, he returned to his own room.  After speculating till thought was weary, he lay down beside Harry, whom he was thankful to find in a still repose, and fell fast asleep.

Margaret lay on a couch in Lady Emily’s room, and slept likewise; but she started wide awake at every moan of the invalid, who often moaned in her sleep.

CHAPTER XX.

The bad man.

She kent he was nae gentle knight,
  That she had letten in;
For neither when he gaed nor cam’,
  Kissed he her cheek or chin.

He neither kissed her when he cam’
  Nor clappit her when he gaed;
And in and out at her bower window,
  The moon shone like the gleed.

Glenkindie. —­ Old Scotch Ballad.

When Euphra recovered from the swoon into which she had fallen —­ for I need hardly explain to my readers, that it was she who walked the Ghost’s Walk in white —­ on seeing Margaret, whom, under the irresistible influences of the moonlight and a bad conscience, she took for the very being whom Euphra herself was personating —­ when she recovered, I say, she found herself lying in the wood, with Funkelstein, whom she had gone to meet, standing beside her.  Her first words were of anger, as she tried to rise, and found she could not.

“How long, Count Halkar, am I to be your slave?”

“Till you have learned to submit.”

“Have I not done all I can?”

“You have not found it.  You are free from the moment you place that ring, belonging to me, in right of my family, into my hands.”

I do not believe that the man really was Count Halkar, although he had evidently persuaded Euphra that such was his name and title.  I think it much more probable that, in the course of picking up a mass of trifling information about various families of distinction, for which his position of secretary in several of their houses had afforded him special facilities, he had learned something about the Halkar family, and this particular ring, of which, for some reason or other, he wanted to possess himself.