g upward, resumed her way up the
path, disappearing for a moment under a massed canopy of Virgin's
Bower. A few seconds, and she would emerge into view again, almost at
the foot of the terrace stairs.

They waited.

"But whatever has become of the woman?" asked Miss Gabriel.

"It's confoundedly odd!" growled the Lord Proprietor.

"She may have turned down a by-path."

"There's no by-path within fifty yards of her. More likely she's
stopping to take a smell of the clematis.... We might step down and
see." The Lord Proprietor suited the action to the words and led the
way.

"In my opinion, if you want it," said Archelaus, "you won't find her
there. Because why? She's a ghost."

"A ghost?" quavered Mrs. Pope.

"Nonsense, my dear!" Her husband offered his arm to assist her down the
steps. "Such a beautiful young person!"

"The first time I saw her she didn't frighten me at all," agreed Mrs.
Pope; "but if she's going to bob in and out of sight in this way, I
shan't sleep in my bed to-night."

A cry from the Lord Proprietor startled them. He had plunged down the
path beneath the overarching clematis. They ran to overtake him, and
found him staring at vacancy. Vashti had vanished, apparently into thin
air.

"Oh, but this is midsummer moonshine!" declared Sir Caesar. "The woman
must be hiding somewhere near. Miss Gabriel, if you will kindly attend
to Mrs. Pope, her husband and I will search the thickets hereabouts."

They searched in the thickets and along the garden paths, but without
recovering a trace of the unknown. Not so much as a glimpse of her
skirt rewarded them.

Sergeant Archelaus abandoned the search early, dodged into the
plantations on the left, and went his way chuckling, back to his boat.

"A terrible trying morning," he allowed, as he cast loose; "but the end
was worth it."

CHAPTER XVIII

VASHTI PLEADS FOR SAARON

For twenty minutes Sir Caesar and Mr. Pope beat the shrubberies, and
even carried their search down to the great walled garden which was one
of the wonders of Inniscaw. Tradition said that the old monks had built
it, of bricks baked upon the mainland; and that it had been their
favourite pleasance, because its walls shut out all view of the sea.
Certainly if the old monks had built this garden, they had built it
well. The Priory itself, of Caen stone, had lain in ruins for at least
two hundred years before the Lord Proprietor came to clear the site and
build his new gr