Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/382

372 My beauty is more young, more fresh than yours."

But the other, looking towards her for a moment, bent forward and whispered with a smile:

"You do not need it."

The girl, taking the compliment as a sneer, and abashed at being discovered, drew back into the shadow and silence, rubbing the powder angrily from her cheeks, her heart raging with fierce, unreasonable jealousy. Her love making her self-conscious and suspicious, she took every glance of the innocent guest to be fraught with meaning, and the natural attention of the man she so loved to the stranger to be admiration and attraction.

In the flash of her rage and during the conversation a wish to be revenged on the woman grew within her. And soon a plan was suggested by words let fall by her companions.

"And so you are afraid of ghosts, Miss Marlow?" the young man said, smiling.

"I am truly, horribly afraid," she answered, glancing round half fearfully. "If I saw anything that represented one, I am sure I should go raving mad."