Leave the whole business to my care. It will amuse me to
plan so exquisite a jest for so lovely a jester."
He bent down to kiss her hand, till his forehead almost touched her knee,
and in the few moments that passed before he raised it, she heard him
laughing softly to himself, as if with irrepressible delight.
"What a child you are," she said, "to be pleased with such folly!"
"What children we both are, Hyacinth! My sweet soul, let us always be
childish, and find pleasure in follies. Life is such a poor thing, that if
we had leisure to appraise its value we should have a contagion of suicide
that would number more deaths than the plague. Indeed, the wonder is, not
that any man should commit _felo de se_, but that so many of us should take
the trouble to live."
Lady Sarah received them at the landing-stage, with an escort of fops and
fine ladies; and the festival promised to be a success. There was a better
supper, and more wine than people expected from her ladyship; and after
supper a good many of those who pretended to have come to see the ghost,
wandered off in couples to saunter along the willow-shaded bank, while only
the more earnest spirits were content to wait and watch and listen in the
great vaulted hall, with no light but the moon which sent a flood of silver
through the high Gothic window, from which every vestige of glass had long
vanished.
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