steps up to the bricked-up doorway. The door opened, the light
spread, and there came out a lady in black, with a lamp in one hand,
and a kind of parcel in the other, and oh, when she turned her face
this way, it was Ellen's!'

'So you called out,' whispered Martyn.

'Dear Ellen, not as she used to be,' added Emily, 'but like what she
was when last I saw her; no, hardly that either, for this was sad,
sad, scared, terrified, with eyes all tears, as Ellen never, never
was.'

'I saw,' added Clarence, 'I saw the shape, but not the countenance
and expression as I used to do.'

'She came down the steps,' continued Emily, 'looking about her as if
making her escape, but, just as she came opposite to us, there was a
sound of tipsy laughing and singing from the gate up by the wood.'

'I thought it real,' said Martyn.

'Then,' continued Emily, 'she wavered, then turned and went under an
arch in the ruin--I fancied she was hiding something--then came out
and fled across to the steps; but there were two dark men rushing
after her, and at the stone steps there was a frightful shriek, and
then it was all over, the steps gone, all quiet, and the magnolia
leaves glistening in the moonshine. Oh! what can it all mean?'

'Went under the arch,' repeated Clarence. 'Is it what she hid there
that keeps her from resting?'