t into words. "There is a
shameful frivolity about it not to be countenanced for a moment. Yet
good and wise men have been said to do it. Fancy the Archbishop of
Canterbury, now, balancing himself on his nose and his palms! Oh! it
_can't_ be true!"

His voice by this time is positively piteous, and he looks earnestly
around, as though longing for some one to support his disbelief.

"You are really excelling yourself to-night," says Mrs. Herrick, in a
delicately disdainful tone.

"Am I? I am glad," humbly, "that _you_ have had an opportunity of seeing
me at my poor best."

"I wonder," says Desmond, suddenly, "if, when old O'Connor revisits the
earth at the witching hour, he comes in the attitude so graphically
described by Kelly? In acrobat fashion, I mean."

At this Monica breaks into laughter so merry, so full of utterly
childish _abandon_ and enjoyment, that all the others perforce join in
it.

"Oh! fancy a ghost standing on his head!" she says, when she can speak.

"I shouldn't fancy it at all," says Mr. Kelly, gloomily. "I _won't_. Far
from it. And I should advise you, Miss Beresford, to treat with less
frivolity a subject so fraught with terror,--especially at this time of
night. If that 'grand old man' were to appear now," with a shuddering
glance behind him, "what _would_ become of us all?"

"An unpleasant idea!" says Miss Browne,--"so unpleasant, indeed, that I
think I should like to go for a little walk somewhere,--_any_where, away
from the scene of the late Mr. O'Connor's nightly visitations."

"Come to the end of the shrubbery, then," says Desmond, "and look at the
sea. It should be worth the trouble on such a night as this. Come you
too, Olga."

"I should like it, but my head aches so," says Mrs. Bohun, plaintively.
And, indeed, she is very pale. "It is either the moonlight which
oppresses me, or--I don't know what. No! I shall go indoors, I think."

"Then I shall go with you," says Mrs. Herrick, regarding her with a
certain anxiety. "But you," turning to Mary Browne, "must not miss a
glimpse of the coast by moonlight. Mr. Kelly will show it to you."

She slips her arm through Olga's, and turns towards the house; Ulic
Ronayne accompanies them; but Lord Rossmoyne and Owen Kelly move in the
contrary direction with Miss Browne. Monica and Desmond have gone on
before; and even when the others arrive at the point in the shrubbery
from which a glimpse of the ocean can be distinctly seen, these last t