ticks, and hated electric light.

While Amaryllis was saying good-night to her host, Dick Bellamy lighted
her candle and waited for her at the foot of the stairs. When she
reached him, she did not at once take it, so that they mounted several
steps together; then she paused.

"Good night, Mr. Bellamy. I hope you didn't hurt your fingers, putting
the fire out. Are you a very awkward person?" she asked, looking up at
him whimsically.

"Shocking," said Dick. "I'm always doing things like that."

"I believe you are," she replied softly. "Thank you so much."

When he went to his room that night, Dick Bellamy was followed by a
vivid ghost with reddish-gold hair, golden-brown, expressive eyes,
adorable mouth, and skin of perfect texture, over neck and shoulders of
a creamy whiteness which melted into the warmer colour of the face by
gradation so fine that none could say where that flush as of a summer
sunset first touched the snow.

As he got into bed, he told himself that he did not object to being
haunted up to midnight, nor even over the edge of sleep, by a spook so
attractive. But if it should come to waking too early to a spectre
implacable--well, that had happened to him once only, long ago, and he
didn't want it to happen again.

But the car would be all right to-morrow--there was always the car.

CHAPTER V.

AMBROTOX.

Amaryllis found her father and Sir Randal at the breakfast-table.

"I'm so glad I'm not the laziest," she said, as she took her seat.

"I'm afraid you are, my dear," replied her father.

"Dick's fetching his car from Iddingfield," explained Randal.

The air was torn by three distinct wails from a syren.

"How unearthly!" said Amaryllis, with her hands to her ears.

"That's Dick," said his brother. "He would have a noise worse than
anyone else's."

Dick came in from the garden. "Morning, Miss Caldegard," he said, as he
sat down. "How d'you like my hooter? Sounds like a fog-horn deprived of
its young, doesn't it?"

Amaryllis laughed.

"I hate it," she said.

Randal looked up from the letter he was reading.

"I'm afraid you two will have to amuse each other this morning," he
said, glancing from the girl to his brother as he handed the letter
across the table to Caldegard. "That'll take a lot of answering, and I
can't do it without your help. I'm afraid Sir Charles has got hold of
the wrong end of the stick."

"How are you going to amuse me, Miss Caldegard?" asked Dick.