So the snow lay white and untrodden outside the old country-house, and within there was laughter and life and bustle. The little black-eyed governess was as busy as any one. Those sharp orbs of hers seemed never at fault; and did the general committee of management find themselves at a stand-still, as was sometimes the case, there was always Miss Dormer to the rescue. But Philip Carlyon’s experiences of Miss Dormer’s skill and usefulness were of a far more personal kind. More than once in the little occurrences of the day he recognised the little governess’s hand. Did Miss Layford, for instance, engaged upon the decoration of the large oil-paintings in the dining-room, require an extra nail, there was Miss Dormer at Philip’s elbow, with a whole boxful to be sent to her assistance. Was there a decoration requiring the skill or power of more than one pair of hands, Mr. Carlyon and Miss Layford were decided by Miss Dormer to be the very couple to execute it the most successfully. And these were but solitary instances in the day’s work. When Philip came to look back upon it, it seemed to be made up of such. And what was the meaning of it all? “Not any disinterested affection for me,” said Philip; “nor for Miss Layford either, for I believe she hates both of us. Is it Jack? and does her ladyship find us rather in the way?” Here Phil paused, for it struck him just at this point that he might have made a good many shots and not come nearer the mark. “Have I hit it?” quoth Jack’s friend. “Well, keep your eye on him, madame; but I shall keep an eye on him too.” It was quite dark before all was done; but the débris of leaves and berries was swept away at last. The younger girls and Miss Dormer had gone to their tea in the schoolroom; Miss Layford drew one of the comfortable old-fashioned chairs to the hall-fire, and seated herself with the grateful air of one whose task is done.

“You are tired,” said Philip, coming to her side.

“Well, yes, just a wee bit; aren’t you?”

“I! not a bit. I am only sorry it’s over.”

“You had better go over and help them at the church; I’ll engage to say they won’t have done there for the next two hours;” and Jack smiled grimly at his own pleasantry.

“Thank you, my dear Jack; but I think, unless Miss Layford particularly wishes to get rid of me, I’ll stay where I am.”

“I can tell you what Miss Layford does particularly wish,” interposed Margaret, “and that is for some tea. If you will ring that bell at your elbow, Mr. Carlyon, we’ll have it here. There will be plenty of time to dress afterwards; the people won’t be here before seven. Early hours, you think, Mr. Carlyon; but we keep old Christmas in an old-fashioned way.”

“I am delighted to hear it,” Mr. Carlyon answered. Perhaps he was bethinking himself of a certain green-leaved, glistening, berried bough he himself had hung not so very far from where Miss Layford was sitting now. Who knows?

At this moment a little figure appeared in the circle. It was the most round-headed and round-eyed of the little robins. “I want Margaret, please,” lisped the little bird shyly from Mr. Carlyon’s arms, for he had caught her up.

“You can’t have Margaret,” said Tiny’s captor, blushing in the dark at his own temerity. Perhaps some one else blushed too; but, as I have said, it was in the dark, so who can tell? But Miss Tiny evidently did not intend to allow the remark to pass.

“She isn’t your Margaret!” she said, fired with a sudden boldness; “put me down!” And then Miss Tiny actually kicked.

“Encore, Tiny!” cried Jack. But Tiny was released.

“That was naughty!” said Margaret, trying to look solemn.

Tiny put up a pitiable lip that threatened tears, seeing which, cruel Margaret took her in her lap and kissed her.

“I don’t like him!” Tiny confided, in perfectly distinct tones.

“Hush!” whispered Margaret.

But Tiny was not to be so easily extinguished. “Why, do you?” And Tiny started bolt upright, her tears and troubles alike forgotten before this new, and evidently objectionable, phase of the affair. Flop came to the rescue; and very much after the Flop fashion it proved.

“Tiny dear,” said she, “you must not talk like that; ladies never like gentlemen, unless,” added the oracle, as a brilliant afterthought, “unless they ask them to—you know.”

After which words of wisdom, Flop smilingly proceeded to hand round the tea, which had just arrived, calmly wondering to herself the while what it was that seemed to be amusing every one so much.

But satisfactory as Flop’s argument might be to herself, to Tiny’s comprehension it by no means mended matters; and for poor Margaret, she was not safe out of the little affair yet.

Tiny’s voice was again uplifted; it was very plaintive this time.

“You won’t like him, not even if he does ask you, will you, Margey? Margey!” It was no use saying, Hush!

Tiny was not looking at all like a shy little robin now, much more indeed like an inquisitive pert little sparrow. But happily at this juncture Miss Dormer’s voice was heard inquiring for her stray pupil.

“Tea is quite over in the schoolroom,” said the governess, making her way into the circle.

“And we have not even heard to what we are indebted for the honour of Miss Tiny’s visit,” said Mr. Carlyon.

“I think Tiny must stop and have tea here, if you please, Miss Dormer,” said Margaret; “then she can tell us what she wants.”

So it was settled, and the invitation being extended to Miss Dormer, she remained also; and then, between delicious morsels of thin bread-and-butter from Margaret’s own plate, Tiny proffered her request: “Please, Margaret, may we sit up to supper?”

Margaret looked grave and shook her head.

“I am afraid not, Tiny.”

“Just this once;” it was Mr. Carlyon.

“Well, just this once then,” Margaret yielded; “to oblige Mr. Carlyon, you know, Tiny.”

Tiny rounded her great blue eyes as if she did not know anything of the kind, and then she actually condescended so far as to smile on her former enemy.

“I wish I had such a good sister,” said Mr. Carlyon.

“She’s as good as a sister,” said Tiny, laying her soft cheek caressingly to Margaret’s face.

“Is she?” Mr. Carlyon answered, with a little flush and laugh, though no one else appeared to see anything that was noticeable in the little girl’s simple speech.

“You have no sister, Mr. Carlyon?” asked Margaret’s soft voice a moment or two later.

“I had one; but she is dead.”

“I—I am very sorry; I beg your pardon,” stammered Margaret, red and troubled.

“Pray don’t, Miss Layford,” Philip interposed. “My poor sister has been dead many years now. I often speak of her,” he went on, anxious, as Margaret felt, to reassure her. “Her life was not of the happiest; she married against my father’s wishes a cousin of ours, and was never forgiven, poor soul, until too late.”

Philip Carlyon ended with a little sigh, and for a moment no one seemed inclined to speak.

“And you, Mr. Carlyon,” a voice asked presently, “do you too object—to this marrying of cousins, I mean?”

Perhaps Miss Dormer, for she it was, took Mr. Carlyon a little by surprise; at any rate he paused a moment or two before replying­.

“I object to it, Miss Dormer, so far that I would never encourage it.”

“You would interfere even to prevent it?”

“That would depend entirely upon my right to do so or not.”

“But you think it wrong?” persisted the wiry voice.

“I have said that I object,” answered Mr. Carlyon sharply, with a wild inclination upon him to say something more, and what he would have called ‘shut the woman up.’

What, on earth, did she mean by pestering him for his opinions like that! But ‘the woman’ was not to be shut up.

“Ah, yes, you object,” she echoed softly, happily ignorant of the precise nature of Mr. Carlyon’s ruminations; “many people do, you know—most people.”

“I don’t think you know anything about it, Miss Dormer,” broke in Jack bluntly; “it’s a thing that’s done every day; and I don’t see what you, nor Carlyon either, for that matter, have got to do with it, that you should go prejudicing people’s minds.”

“I, my good fellow!” cried Phil, in a positive whirl of amazement. But Miss Dormer said nothing.

Margaret Layford rose: “I think it is time to dress,” she said quietly, and broke up the circle.

CHAPTER II

The Layfords’ guests that Christmas-eve consisted merely of some half-dozen or so of near neighbours with their families, and, it may be, here and there a chance nephew, niece, or visitor. It was an annual affair, this Layford gathering, and was just what all such gatherings should be, if they are not; and Jack Layford’s friend was not the man to feel, or to let others feel him, a stranger in such scenes. He was one of themselves from the very first, ready for anything and everything; the only wonder appeared to be, how they had ever done without him. The charades, for instance, had never been so successful. The way in which Mr. Carlyon made love to Margaret Layford! “O, really, you know,” as one fat old lady observed, “one felt almost as if they hadn’t any business to be looking!”►And then there was Jack. The way in which Jack glared as the crest-fallen rival in the last scene—the word was “checkmate”—no one had ever seen him act anything like it before. After the charades, there was a game in which two of the company left the room, whilst the others fixed upon some proverb to be afterwards discovered by the banished ones. Mr. Carlyon, when his turn came, found himself with Miss Layford for companion; and with the consciousness, moreover, that it was somehow or other Miss Dormer’s handiwork again. But he was not going to trouble himself as to the how or even the wherefore of his bit of good fortune; his only anxiety just now was to make the best use of it.

Do you want to know how our friend set to work? Would you like very much to hear what took place under the holly and mistletoe in the old hall, where these two young people found themselves alone? I think I know some one who would have given his ears to know. But if the dear old holly, or mistletoe either, only whispered one-half of what goes on under their green boughs, who would have faith in them any longer? Should we not rather come to hate the sight of them for their treachery? I shall only tell you that there was a mistletoe-bough—but that you already know—and that it was very near, very near indeed, that Jack found the two standing, when he suddenly opened the drawing-room door, and in rather a surly voice bade them come in. Perhaps the culprits themselves looked a little bit conscious; but what was it to Jack if they did? What was it to any one, if you come to that! You may shake your head and look pious, Miss Propriety; but what was mistletoe made for, do you suppose? and above all, what was it hung under the lamp in the old hall for, that Christmas-eve—can you tell me that?

Love—and whatever the answer to the above questions may be, from mistletoe to love is not such a very great stretch, even for the imagination—love, I was about to observe, is apt to make us all somewhat selfish, even the best of us; and so occupied was Philip Carlyon with his own affairs this same snowy Christmas-eve, that he had little or no eyes for those of his friend. Had it not been so, he must have seen that this same friend of his was being thrown in the little black-eyed governess’s way a great deal more than was at all desirable. The great burly fly was setting his feet farther and farther in the cunningly-spread web, with the little spider smiling to herself at the other end, to see what a great stupid fly it was; and there was no one to the rescue.

To Phil Carlyon this night there was a glamour over everything. The people—kindly commonplace people enough probably—were the nicest people he had ever met. The old ones, the best, the most genial of old souls; the girls, the nicest and prettiest of young ones; even Miss Dormer, viewed in the universal rose-tint, was almost tolerable. But somehow it never got beyond the almost with her. It seemed to Phil, as he went over it all that night, or rather morning, by his own fire, like a page out of a fairy-tale or a scene out of a pantomime; for, you see, he knew what had taken place under the mistletoe in the great hall, if we do not. The prince and princess had met at last, and now there was nothing to do but to live happily ever after. Bed seemed a grand mistake to Philip that night. “To sleep; perchance to dream!” Why, what dreams, the wildest, the most blissful, could come up to this grand reality of his? But he turned in at last, nevertheless, and went to sleep; and dreamt too, for that matter. He had been asleep, and dreaming, perhaps an hour, when the door of his room was suddenly opened, and Phil—who was at this moment being united to Miss Dormer, gracefully attired in the dining-room curtains, with the lamp and its bunch of mistletoe by way of head-dress—awoke with a start to see his friend Jack standing, candle in hand, by his bed-side.

Bewildered by the sudden apparition, and but half awake, Phil sat up, blinking owl-like and silent at Jack and his candle.

“By Jove!” he cried at length, “then that was the hall-lamp!” And then Phil, moved thereto by the recollection of his dream, fell back upon his pillow and fairly roared.

It was Jack’s turn to stare now; and there is no saying how long Phil’s fit might have continued, had not his eyes suddenly fallen on the white face still by his bed-side.

“What is it, Jack?” he cried, starting up, sobered and wide awake.

Jack went over to the mantelshelf and put down his candle, then he came back to the bed.

“Phil,” he said, “do you believe in ghosts?”

If Jack had not been so evidently in earnest, it is more than probable that his friend would have had another relapse. As it was, he only answered, “I never have done;” as if, with Jack’s face before him, he would not take upon himself to say what he might not do before the interview was over.

“Phil,” said white-faced Jack, “if there are such things, I have seen one to-night.”

“Bad dreams,” suggested Phil, thinking of his own, perhaps.

But Jack shook his head. “I was as wide awake as you are.”

Carlyon lay looking at him for a moment or two silently. “Wait a bit,” said he at last; “I see there’s a little fire still; poke it up, Jack, and I’ll get into my dressing-gown. Give me my slippers, there’s a good fellow; and now let’s talk it over comfortably.”

Jack had got up a tolerably cheerful fire, and the two drew their chairs before it.

“Now then, Jack, for the ghost.”

“Don’t laugh, old fellow. I give you my word I wouldn’t go through it again for a fortune—ghost or no ghost.”

“I’m not going to laugh, Jack, I promise you; so there now, fire away!”

“Well then, to begin at the beginning, I was not long getting into bed; and I should say that my getting to bed and to sleep were about one and the same thing. I must have been asleep some time, for at first I thought it was morning, and that it was Blake outside with the shaving-water.”

“Thought what was?”

“Why, the ghost, or whatever it was. I woke up in a sudden kind of way—all in a moment, you know—and there it stood, just at the foot of the bed, so that the light from the window close by fell right on it, and I could see that it, whatever it was, was all white, and staring, and wrapped up in what looked like grave-clothes; that is, the head was all wrapped up. I haven’t got over it yet.” Jack shivered in a kind of apology.

“Never mind, old man; I daresay it was deuced unpleasant.” And Phil gave a sturdy poke at the logs before them, as if even he would not be quite beyond the influences of a cheering blaze.

“At first,” Jack went on, “I thought if it would only speak, it would be better than the horrible silence; but when it did speak, it was more horrible still. I may as well make a clean breast of it, and tell you that I fairly bolted under the bedclothes. When I could positively bear it no longer, I screwed up my courage and came to the surface once more; but the thing was gone.”

“But not before you had heard what it had got to say?”

Jack stammered and flushed in an unaccountable manner.

“Phil,” he said earnestly, laying his hand on his friend’s knee, “there’s not another man in this world I would have told all this to.”

“I can believe it, Jack, and I shouldn’t have liked it a bit more than you did; so tell me all about it, old boy, what it said, and everything.”

“That’s the queerest part of it,” Jack began, anything but white-faced now. “You remember what you were telling us in the hall,—about your sister and your cousin, you know?”

Phil nodded, a trifle wonderingly.

“Well, that’s what it was.”

Phil could only stare at Jack blankly.

“You take me?” the latter asked.

“Can’t say I do—unless,” Phil added, “you mean me to understand that a visitant from the other world comes to talk to you about my relations, which, to say the least of it, sounds rather unlikely.”

“I didn’t mean that—at least, not exactly; it was a kind of—in short, a warning—there!”

“Concerning marriage and cousinship?”

Jack nodded.

Phil came bolt upright in his chair. “Supper,” he said shortly.

Jack made a movement of impatience.

“My dear Jack, there’s no other way out of it—there really isn’t. Now, just ask yourself, for one moment, who should come, on the strength of my poor sister’s story, from the other world, to trouble you with the desirability or undesirability of a match between you and any cousin in Christendom?”

“My mother.” Jack’s voice was very low, and Jack’s face, that had been very red, was white again. His companion gave a long low whistle. “I daresay you think me mad or an idiot, Phil; but I have seen it, and that makes all the difference.”

“And I’ll see it too, Jack; somebody’s been playing you a trick, depend upon it. They may try it again probably; and then we’ll be even with ’em, or at least we’ll try.”

“But I sleep with my door locked.”

“Humph! where did you find your key—just now, I mean?”

“Why, that was rather funny, now you mention it—on the floor.”

“And the door was still locked?”

“Yes, it was locked all right. But why do you ask? Have you got some wonderful idea in that long head of yours?”

“Never you mind my head; we aren’t going to talk any more about this affair to-night; and as I don’t suppose you care exactly to go back to your own room, do you take my bed; I shall do very well on this chair.”