Making a hasty toilet, he left his room, and went into the grounds, where he gathered a large bunch of deep-red roses, and sent them to Dainty's room by a maid. At breakfast she wore them at the waist of her simple white gown, and they contrasted with the pallor that lingered on her cheeks from last night's experience. [30]"I hope you are well this morning?" he said to her, anxiously; and she smiled pensively, as she answered: [30] "I am better, thank you. The sunlight has chased away all the terrors of the night, and I am wondering if indeed I could have dreamed that horrible thing, as Aunt Judith declares." "So, then, you were frightened by something!" he exclaimed, tenderly. "Would you mind telling me all about it?" "Perhaps you will think me very silly," she replied, dubiously, lifting her large eyes with a wistful look that thrilled his heart. "No, indeed. Let me hear it," he cried; while the others waited in malicious joy, knowing how angry it always made him to hear any reference to the family ghost. Dainty drew a long, quivering sigh, and began: "There isn't much to tell, after all; only that while I was dressing for dinner, I heard in the next room the sound of a terrible hacking cough, several times repeated, as of some one in the last stages of consumption. When the maid came in I inquired about it, and she crossed herself piously, looking behind her as if in fear, while she muttered to herself about 'the old monk.' When I pressed her for an explanation, she denied that there was any sick person in the next room, or even in the house." She paused timidly, wondering why his brow had grown gloomy as a thunder-cloud; but he said, with a kind of impatient courtesy: "Well, go on." Dainty's hands began to tremble as they toyed with the richly chased silver knife and fork; but she continued, falteringly: [31]"Afterward, when I was going back to my room, I told Ela what I had heard; and she laughed, and said that the family ghost of Ellsworth was a wicked old monk who had died of consumption." [31]
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