Meanwhile Madge and Brian were walking up and down in the moonlight.  It was an exquisite night, with a cloudless blue sky glittering with the stars, and a great yellow moon in the west.  Madge seated herself on the side of the marble ledge which girdled the still pool of water in front of the house, and dipped her hand into the cool water.  Brian leaned against the trunk of a great magnolia tree, whose glossy green leaves and great creamy blossoms looked fantastic in the moonlight.  In front of them was the house, with the ruddy lamplight streaming through the wide windows, and they could see the guests within, excited by the music, waltzing to Rolleston’s playing, and their dark figures kept passing and re-passing the windows while the charming music of the waltz mingled with their merry laughter.

“Looks like a haunted house,” said Brian, thinking of Poe’s weird poem; “but such a thing is impossible out here.”

“I don’t know so much about that,” said Madge, gravely, lifting up some water in the palm of her hand, and letting it stream back like diamonds in the moonlight.  “I knew a house in St. Kilda which was haunted.”

“By what?” asked Brian, sceptically.

“Noises!” she answered, solemnly.

Brian burst out laughing and startled a bat, which fleur round and round in the silver moonlight, and whirred away into the shelter of a witch elm.

“Rats and mice are more common here than ghosts,” he said, lightly.  “I’m afraid the inhabitants of your haunted house were fanciful.”

“So you don’t believe in ghosts?”

“There’s a Banshee in our family,” said Brian, with a gay smile, “who is supposed to cheer our death beds with her howlings; but as I’ve never seen the lady myself, I’m afraid she’s a Mrs. Harris.”

“It’s aristocratic to have a ghost in a family, I believe,” said Madge; “that is the reason we colonials have none.”

“Ah, but you will have,” he answered with a careless laugh.  “There are, no doubt, democratic as well as aristocratic ghosts; but, pshaw!” he went on, impatiently, “what nonsense I talk.  There are no ghosts, except of a man’s own raising.  The ghosts of a dead youth—­the ghosts of past follies—­the ghosts of what might have been—­these are the spectres which are more to be feared than those of the churchyard.”

Madge looked at him in silence, for she understood the meaning of that passionate outburst—­the secret which the dead woman had told him, and which hung like a shadow over his life.  She arose quietly and took his arm.  The light touch roused him, and a faint wind sent an eerie rustle through the still leaves of the magnolia, as they walked back in silence to the house.

CHAPTER

XXIV.  BRIAN RECEIVES A LETTER.