the whole of it.  Little affairs of this kind are incident to fashionable society all over the world!  The lady being only scratched, is more frightened than hurt.  Nobody is killed; and if there were, why killings are become so fashionable, that if the killed be not a gentleman, nobody thinks anything of it,” he continues.  And Mr. Soloman being an excellent diplomatist, does, with the aid of the hostess, her twelve masters of ceremony, her beadle, and two policemen, forthwith bring the house to a more orderly condition.  But night has rolled into the page of the past, the gray dawn of morning is peeping in at the half-closed windows, the lights burning in the chandeliers shed a pale glow over the wearied features of those who drag, as it were, their languid bodies to the stifled music of unwilling slaves.  And while daylight seems modestly contending with the vulgar glare within, there appears among the pale revellers a paler ghost, who, having stalked thrice up and down the hall, preserving the frigidity and ghostliness of the tomb, answering not the questions that are put to him, and otherwise deporting himself as becometh a ghost of good metal, is being taken for a demon of wicked import.  Now he pauses at the end of the hall, faces with spectre-like stare the alarmed group at the opposite end, rests his left elbow on his scythe-staff, and having set his glass on the floor, points to its running sands warningly with his right forefinger.  Not a muscle does he move.  “Truly a ghost!” exclaims one.  “A ghost would have vanished before this,” whispers another.  “Speak to him,” a third responds, as the musicians are seen to pale and leave their benches.  Madame Flamingo, pale and weary, is first to rush for the door, shrieking as his ghostship turns his grim face upon her.  Shriek follows shriek, the lights are put out, the gray dawn plays upon and makes doubly frightful the spectre.  A Pandemonium of shriekings and beseechings is succeeded by a stillness as of the tomb.  Our ghost is victor.

CHAPTER VIII.

What takes place between George Mullholland and Mr. Snivel.

The man who kissed and bore away the prostrate girl was George Mullholland.

“Oh!  George-George!” she whispers imploringly, as her eyes meet his; and turning upon the couch of her chamber, where he hath lain her, awakes to consciousness, and finds him watching over her with a lover’s solicitude.  “I was not cold because I loved you less-oh no!  It was to propitiate my ambition-to be free of the bondage of this house-to purge myself of the past-to better my future!” And she lays her pale, nervous hand gently on his arm-then grasps his hand and presses it fervently to her lips.