hook the water from her
arms, and, stepping off the Captain, moved towards the fireplace. The
spell which had, up to the present, enthralled the unfortunate
Captain, was now broken, and, thinking that his ghostly visitor had
betaken herself right away, he sat up. He had hardly done so before
the darkness was rudely dissipated, and, to his horror, he saw
looking at him, from a distance of only a few feet, a white, luminous
face, presumably that of a woman. But what a woman! What a
devil!--what a match for the most lurid of any of Satan's male
retainers. Yet she was not without beauty--beauty of the richest
sensual order; beauty that, had it been flesh and blood, would have
sent men mad. Her hair, jet black, wavy, and parted in the centre, was
looped over her shell-like ears, which were set unusually low and far
back on her head; her nose was of that rare and matchless shape termed
Grecian; and her mouth--in form, a triumph of all things heavenly, in
expression, a triumph of all things hellish. The magnificent turn of
its short upper lip, and the soft voluptuous line of its under lip;
its sportive dimples and ripe red colour; its even rows of dazzling,
pearly teeth were adorable; but they appealed to the senses, and in no
sense or shape to the soul. Her brows, slightly irregular in outline,
met over the nose; her eyelashes were of great length, and her
eyes--slightly, ever so slightly, obliquely set, and larger than those
of living human beings--were black, black as her hair; and the pupils
sparkled and shone with the most damnable expression of satanical
hatred and glee. The whole thing, the face and the light that emanated
from it, was so entirely awful and devilish, that Captain Smythe sat
like one turned to stone, and it was not until long after it had
vanished that he groped his way to the door, and in Adam's costume,
for he dared not stay to put on his clothes, fled down the passage to
his bedroom.

From his wife he got little sympathy; her sarcasm was too deep for
words, and she merely ordered her husband on no account to breathe a
word of his "silliness" before either the children or the servants.
The injunction, however, which was naturally carried out to the
letter, was futile as a precaution, for, on running into the bathroom
one morning when every one else was downstairs, the eldest boy,
Ronald, saw, floating in the bath, the body of a hoary-headed old man.
It was bloated and purplish blue, and had big, glass