awoke in the night-time now, she knew
no fear.

And yet--it was about three weeks after the beginning of Hubert Lepel's
illness--her heart gave a wild leap when she opened her eyes one night,
and saw in her room, by the faint light of a glimmering taper, the
ghostly figure of a woman clothed from head to foot in white. She stood,
not by the bedside, but by the mantelpiece, with something--was it a
medicine-phial?--in her hand. What the visitant was doing Enid could not
exactly see; but she started up, and at the movement the white woman
turned and showed her face.

Enid uttered an exclamation--a sort of gasp of terror--for her worst
fears were realised. The phantom which she had dreaded had come to her
again in spite of Maurice's promises of aid. He had forgotten to pray
for her perhaps--a childish notion crossed her mind that perhaps because
of his forgetfulness the ghost was there.

But was it a ghost--a phantom of the senses, and not a living woman
after all? For the face which met the girl's eyes was not one that she
could easily mistake--it was the face of Florence Vane.

CHAPTER XLIII.

At that moment Enid recalled, by one instinctive flash of memory, the
words that Maurice Evandale had said to her. If ever she saw "the ghost"
again, she was to speak to it--she was not to be afraid. God would take
care of her. With a sort of mental clutch at the strength residing in
those words, she maintained herself in a sitting posture and looked the
white woman full in the face. Yes, it was Flossy's face; but was it
Flossy herself? For the figure made a strange threatening gesture, and
glided smoothly towards the door as if to disappear--though in natural
and not very ghost-like fashion, for the door stood wide open, and it
was the soft cool night-breeze of summer that had opened Enid's
slumbering eyes. In another moment the visitor would be gone, and Enid
would never know whether what she saw was a reality or a dream.

That should not be. Strength and courage suddenly returned to her,
inspired by the remembrance of her lover and his words, she would speak.

"Why are you here?" she said.

Still no answer. The figure glided onward, and its eyes--glittering and
baleful--were never once removed from Enid's face. With one supreme
effort, the girl sprang from the bed and threw herself in the strange
visitor's way. The figure halted and drew back. Enid laid a hand upon
its arm. Ah, yes, thank Heaven, she felt the to