Annie Haynes Premium Collection – 8 Murder Mysteries in One Volume. Annie Haynes

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СКАЧАТЬ every respect.”

      A slight smile curled Hilda’s lips—only too well did she divine who had dictated Lady Laura’s offer.

      “Don’t you see, dear, that I owe everything I wear, everything I eat, to your mother’s kindness? I must not go on carelessly piling up a debt which I may never be able to pay.”

      “You know we have told you not to think of it like that. Arthur would be very angry.”

      “Oh, Arthur is all that is good and kind,” Hilda interrupted “and so is Arthur’s sister”—with an affectionate squeeze of the girl’s arm—“but I should not like to think—Mavis, did you notice anything? Listen! There, I am sure I heard a step! Somebody is following us!”

      “It is Arthur, I expect. You know he said he should not be long; but I don’t hear anything.”

      “No, no!” Hilda continued quickly. “It was not decided enough for Arthur. It had a stealthy, gliding sound, as if some one did not want to be heard. There, I believe it is coming again.”

      They stood still and listened, and Hilda turned round.

      “There, you see, it was your fancy!” Mavis said, moving a step away. “Come along, Hilda—you make me feel quite creepy. What—what is it?” as the other clutched her arm.

      “Look! Look!” Hilda cried hoarsely, her fingers gripping Mavis nervously. “It is she—it is Nurse Marston!”

      With a sharp exclamation Mavis turned. Right behind them, some little way back on the path down which they had just come, there stood a woman. Mavis caught sight of her dark cloak and little close nurse’s bonnet, as Hilda spoke, of the broad white cuffs and collar. With a little fluttering sob she caught at Hilda.

      “How did she come? Oh, Hilda, let me speak to her!” She tried to move forward, but her knees felt strangely numbed and tottering.

      Hilda held her back.

      “Ah, no, no, Mavis, I daren’t! Indeed I daren’t! It is her spirit!” with a violent shudder.

      In spite of her common sense, Mavis shivered from head to foot as she turned to the terrified girl beside her.

      “Hush, hush, Hilda! We must speak to her, ask her what she wants, why she has come!”

      “Oh, don’t!” cried Hilda, half fainting. “I know!”

      “You know?” For half a minute, as if stunned, Mavis stood silent, quiescent, while the other clung round her, moaning. “Let me go Hilda! I—” She stopped and stared in amazement. It seemed to her that she had not taken her eyes from that quiet figure on the path, and yet now it had disappeared. In vain she gazed round, not a vestige of it was to be seen. “Hilda,” she said in a low tone, “it—she has gone.”

      The girls looked at one another and Mavis made a step forward.

      “Let us look for her,” she said.

      Hilda gave a cry of horror.

      “I am frightened, frightened! Oh, Mavis, Mavis, come home!”

      As Mavis yielded, not reluctantly, in spite of her brave words, a masculine step sounded behind them, there was the unmistakable aroma of a cigar, and Sir Arthur joined them.

      “Oh, I say, this is splendid! I was afraid Gregory had kept me so long that I should not be able to overtake you. Now we will have a stroll round the rose garden before we turn in. Why, Hilda, my dear child, what on earth is the matter?” as the girl with a sob of terror almost threw herself into his arms.

      “Oh, Arthur, Arthur!” she cried, clinging to him as a drowning man clutches his rescuer. “She is there in the shrubbery—Nurse Marston! Take me away! Take me away! I shall die if I see her again!”

      Her agitation was so excessive that Arthur, who had started at the mention of Nurse Marston and looked back, could not release himself, and was obliged to apply himself to the task of consoling and calming her. Presently he and Mavis between them half led, half carried her back to the house. Mavis in the meantime, in the intervals of attempting to soothe Hilda, gave him a short account of what had taken place.

      As soon as they were safely in the hall Hilda burst into a passion of tears.

      “Oh, Arthur, it is dreadful! She—I think she appeared to me because I was the cause of her death! If she had not been nursing me—”

      “Death! Death!” Arthur repeated in as cheerful a tone as he could assume, for as a matter of fact recent occurrences at the Manor were beginning to puzzle him sorely. “Who says Nurse Marston is dead? I should imagine, on the contrary, that if you saw her in the shrubbery to-night she is alive and well.”

      “No, no!” wailed Hilda. “Don’t you understand that it was her spirit we saw? She wants to tell us something. I think it is where she is buried. Perhaps”—with a violent shudder—“the place where she was standing was her grave!”

      “Oh, hush, hush, Hilda!” Mavis said quickly. “I do not think she wanted to speak to us. Why should she have gone away so suddenly if she had? You did not see anything of her, I conclude, Arthur?” she went on, turning to her brother. “It seemed to me that if she turned back she must have met you, for I fancied we heard your footsteps almost directly she disappeared.”

      “Disappeared indeed!” Arthur repeated in a mocking tone. “Do say ‘When she walked away,’ Mavis. Do not tell me that you too believe it was a spirit?”

      “No, I do not think it was,” said Mavis slowly, “It looked to me too solid somehow. I have always fancied a ghost altogether more spiritualized. Besides, though I noticed nothing myself, before we saw her Hilda heard footsteps—”

      “I—I don’t now feel sure that I did,” Hilda interposed. She was recovering her composure somewhat, and a little colour was slowly coming back to her cheeks as she sipped the wine that Arthur had ordered for her.

      “You spoke of it to me, so I think there must have been the sound,” said Mavis. “You certainly had the impression that there was a sound, Hilda.”

      “That settles the question,” Sir Arthur cried, springing to his feet. “Ghosts don’t make any audible sound as they walk, or so I have always been informed. If Nurse Marston, for some reason of her own, is lurking about the shrubbery frightening people we will have her out to-night. Jenkins,” to the butler, who was hovering round at a discreet distance, not averse doubtless to learning what was the cause of the unusual commotion, “tell two of the stable-men to come round, and I will take James too. We will soon learn whether there is anyone in the shrubbery.”

      “Yes, sir,” The old man moved nearer his master. “I—I don’t fancy as you’ll discover anything there, Sir Arthur. Two of the men—one from the stables, and Jones, the second in the hothouses, they saw her—Nurse Marston—two or three nights ago, close to the conservatory, but the moment they were after her she was gone. I don’t suppose we shall get rid of the ghost, Sir Arthur, not until the poor young woman’s fate is known.”

      “Now, Jenkins, don’t you talk such rubbish!” reproved Sir Arthur, calling to James and giving the orders for the other men himself. “Poor young woman, indeed!” he went on as he turned back for a moment. “That is not precisely СКАЧАТЬ