The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ghost Girl, by H. De Vere Stacpoole

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Title: The Ghost Girl

Author: H. De Vere Stacpoole

Release Date: October 21, 2008 [EBook #26986]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE GHOST GIRL

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Sea Plunder $1.30 net
The Gold Trail $1.30 net
The Pearl Fishers $1.30 net
The Presentation $1.30 net
The New Optimism $1.00 net
Poppyland $2.00 net

The Poems of Francois Villon
Translated by
H. DE VERE STACPOOLE

Boards $3.00 net
Half Morocco $7.50 net

THE GHOST GIRL

BY
H. DE VERE STACPOOLE

AUTHOR OF
"THE MAN WHO LOST HIMSELF," "SEA PLUNDER,"
"THE PEARL FISHERS," "THE GOLD TRAIL," ETC.

NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
TORONTO: S. B GUNDY--MCMXVIII

Copyright, 1918
By JOHN LANE COMPANY

PRESS OF
VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
BINGHAMTON, N. Y.
U. S. A.

THE GHOST GIRL

PART I

CHAPTER I

It was a warm, grey, moist evening, typical Irish weather, and Miss
Berknowles was curled up in a window-seat of the library reading a book.
Kilgobbin Park lay outside with the rooks cawing in the trees, miles of
park land across which the dusk was coming, blotting out all things from
Arranakilty to the Slieve Bloom Mountains.

The turf fire burning on the great hearth threw out a rich steady glow
that touched the black oak panelling of the room, the book backs, and the
long-nosed face of Sir Nicholas Berknowles "attributed to Lely" and
looking down at his last descendant from a dusty canvas on the opposite
wall.

The girl made a prettier picture. Red hair when it is of the right colour
is lovely, and Phylice Berknowles' hair was of the right red, worn in a
tail--she was only fifteen--so long that she could bite the end with ease
and comfort when she was in a meditative mood, a habit of perdition that
no schoolmistress could break her of.

She was biting her tail now as she read, up to her eyes in the marvellou