XVIII.
The men who had talked of going away on Thursday seemed to have found it
practicable to stay. At any rate, they were all there on the Saturday
night for the ghost-seeing, and, of course, none of the women had gone.
What was more remarkable, in a house rather full of girls, nobody was
sick; or, at least, everybody was well enough to be at dinner, and, after
dinner, at the dance, which impatiently, if a little ironically, preceded
the supernatural part of the evening's amusement. It was the decorum of
a woman who might have been expected not to have it that Mrs. Westangle
had arranged that the evening's amusement should not pass the bound
between Saturday night and Sunday morning. The supper was to be later,
but that was like other eating and drinking on the Sabbath; and it was to
be a cold supper.
At half-past ten the dancing stopped in the foyer and the drawing-room,
and by eleven the guests were all seated fronting the closed doors of the
library. There were not so many of them but that in the handsome space
there was interval enough to lend a desired distance to the apparitions;
and when the doors were slid aside it was applausively found that there
was a veil of gauze falling from the roof to the floor, which promised
its aid in heightening the coming mystery.
Pages:
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115