last half-hour which is
often the most enjoyable of the whole evening.

Lord and Lady Darcy and the grown-up visitors retired into the
drawing-room to regale themselves with sandwiches and ices, and the
young people stormed the supper-room, interrupted the servants in their
work of clearing away the good things, seated themselves
indiscriminately on floor, chair, or table, and despatched a second
supper with undiminished appetite. Then Esther mounted the platform
where the band had been seated, and played a last waltz, and a very last
waltz, and "really the last waltz of all." The squire's son played a
polka with two fingers, and a great deal of loud pedal, and the fun grew
faster and more uproarious with every moment. Even Rosalind threw aside
young ladylike affectations and pranced about without thinking of
appearances, and when at last the others left the room to prepare for
the drive home she seized Peggy's arm in eager excitement.

"Peggy! Peggy! Such a joke! I told them to come back to say good-bye,
and I am going to play a twick! I'm going to be a ghost, and glide out
from behind the shwubs, and fwighten them. I can do it beautifully.
See!" She turned down the gas as she spoke, threw her light gauze skirt
over her head, and came creeping across the room with stealthy tread,
and arms outstretched, while Peggy clapped her hands in delight.

"Lovely! Lovely! It looks exactly like wings. It makes me quite
creepy. Don't come out if Mellicent is alone, whatever you do. She
would be scared out of her seven senses. Just float gently along toward
them, and keep your hands forward so as to hide your face. They will
recognise you if you don't."

"Oh, if you can see my face, we must have less light. There are too
many candles, I'll put out the ones on the mantelpiece. Stay where you
are, and tell me when it is wight," Rosalind cried gaily, and ran across
the room on her tiny pink silk slippers.

So long as she lived Peggy Saville remembered the next minutes; to the
last day of her life she had only to shut her eyes and the scene rose up
before her, clear and vivid as in a picture. The stretch of empty room,
with its fragrant banks of flowers; the graceful figure flitting across
the floor, its outline swathed in folds of misty white; the glimpse of a
lovely, laughing face as Rosalind stretched out her arm to reach the
silver candelabra, the sudden flare of light which caught the robe of
gauze, and swep