er sister's cheek with a cold kiss, and lay down in her
little bed, her slender hand under her head, and spoke no more.

Alice, not knowing what to think, went back to hers.

About this time Ultor De Lacy returned. He heard his elder daughter's
strange narrative with marked uneasiness, and his agitation seemed to
grow rather than subside. He enjoined her, however, not to mention it to
the old servant, nor in presence of anybody she might chance to see, but
only to him and to the priest, if he could be persuaded to resume his
duty and return. The trial, however, such as it was, could not endure
very long; matters had turned out favourably. The union of his younger
daughter might be accomplished within a few months, and in eight or
nine weeks they should be on their way to Paris.

A night or two after her father's arrival, Alice, in the dead of the
night, heard the well-known strange deep voice speaking softly, as it
seemed, close to her own window on the outside; and Una's voice, clear
and tender, spoke in answer. She hurried to her own casement, and pushed
it open, kneeling in the deep embrasure, and looking with a stealthy and
affrighted gaze towards her sister's window. As she crossed the floor
the voices subsided, and she saw a light withdrawn from within. The
moonbeams slanted bright and clear on the whole side of the castle
overlooking the glen, and she plainly beheld the shadow of a man
projected on the wall as on a screen.

This black shadow recalled with a horrid thrill the outline and fashion
of the figure in the Spanish dress. There were the cap and mantle, the
rapier, the long thin limbs and sinister angularity. It was so thrown
obliquely that the hands reached to the window-sill, and the feet
stretched and stretched, longer and longer as she looked, toward the
ground, and disappeared in the general darkness; and the rest, with a
sudden flicker, shot downwards, as shadows will on the sudden movement
of a light, and was lost in one gigantic leap down the castle wall.

"I do not know whether I dream or wake when I hear and see these sights;
but I will ask my father to sit up with me, and we _two_ surely cannot
be mistaken. May the holy saints keep and guard us!" And in her terror
she buried her head under the bed-clothes, and whispered her prayers for
an hour.

CHAPTER VII

Una's Love

"I have been with Father Denis," said De Lacy, next day, "and he will
come to-morrow; and, thank Heaven! you may