woman is so bound by the trammels of society, she cannot watch and baulk him in life as a man might do; perhaps after all it is mere empty talk and babble; and, granted that she has the wish to cross him, she is not likely to have the power. She seemed in earnest, but she was jealous; I saw it in her eyes, and that threw her off her guard and made her talk wildly.
We must have looked very nice just now—two women quarrelling over one man! There is an intense vulgarity in the situation, whether the actors be clad in silk and velvet, or homespun and duffle-grey; perhaps, though, the fact of his being not in the least in love with either of us somewhat lessens the disgrace. And all through my night dreams, ringing now near, now far away, sometimes in my ears, sometimes seeming to call faintly across the long years, comes a bitter, silvern voice, saying, "You will never be Paul Vasher's wife—never."
CHAPTER XIII.
Nor yet on summer's death, nor on the birth
Of trembling winter—the fairest flowers of the season
Are our carnations and streaked gilly flowers."
"What is that?" says Milly, pausing on her way upstairs.
"Can it be the ghost?" I ask, standing still to listen likewise.
Luttrell Court, like all other respectable family mansions, possesses its ghost: and an exceedingly ill-conditioned one this particular spirit is given to heaving up beds (and their occupants) in the dead of the night, dashing down cart-loads of crockery out-side chamber doors, beating members of the family with invisible whips, and boxing the ears of trembling footmen in dark corners, or so those gentlemen aver.
"I don't think a ghost could give such a substantial groan as
