E. Nesbit

“ The window of the little room was open and she leaned out of it. The stone sill was cold to her elbows through her print dressing jacket.
Ernestine went on brushing her hair. Amelia heard a movement below the window and listened. “To-night will do,” someone said.
“It's too late,” said someone else.
“If you're afraid it will always be too late or too early,” said someone. And it was Thesiger.
“You know I'm not afraid,” the other one, who was Doricourt, answered hotly.
“An hour for each of us will satisfy honour,” said Thesiger, carelessly. “The girls will expect it. I couldn't sleep. ”

“ And at Doricourt life was delightful even on the days when there was no party. It was perhaps more delightful to Ernestine than to her friend, but even so, the one least pleased was Ernestine's aunt.
“I do think,” she said to the other aunt whose name was Julia—“I daresay it is not so to you, being accustomed to Mr. Frederick, of course from his childhood, but I always find gentlemen in the house so unsettling. Especially young gentlemen. And when there are young ladies also. One is always on the qui vive for excitement.” ”

“ All the same,” said Thesiger, deliberately, “you wouldn't care to pass a night in that pavilion.”
“No more would you,” was all Frederick found on his lips.
“I admit that I shouldn't enjoy it,” said Eugene; “but I'll bet you a hundred you don't do it.”
“Done,” said Frederick.
“Oh, Mr. Doricourt!” breathed Ernestine, a little shocked at betting “before ladies.”
“Don't!” said Amelia, to whom, of course, no one paid any attention; “don't do it!”
You know how, in the midst of flower and leafage, a snake sometimes will suddenly, surprisingly rear a head that threatens? ”

“ Amelia did not want to die, and her face was not the laugh and jest, or indeed the special interest, of anyone. Really life was a very good thing to Amelia, specially when she had a new dress and someone paid her a compliment. But she went on writing verses extolling the advantages of the Tomb, and grovelling metrically at the feet of One who was Another's. Until that summer when she was nineteen and went to stay with Ernestine at Doricourt. ”

“ Half-way she paused, lifted the hand that had been hidden among her muslin flounces, and held it out to him with a big Indian dagger in it.
“I got it out of the hall,” she said. “If there's any real danger—anything living, I mean. I thought—but I know I couldn't use it. Will you take it?”
He took it, laughing kindly.
“How romantic you are!” he said, admiringly, and looked at her standing there in the mingled gold and grey of dawn and candle-light. It was as though he had never seen her before.
They reached the steps of the pavilion and stumbled up them. The door was closed, but not locked. ”

“ People seem to have a prejudice against the place as a sleeping apartment. I can't think why.”
“isn't he simply killing?” Ernestine asked Amelia, who said:—
“And doesn't anyone know how it happened?”
No one answered till Ernestine repeated the question in the form of “I suppose it was just accident?”
“It was a curiously recurrent accident,” said Thesiger, and Frederick, who throughout the conversation had said the right things at the right moment, remarked that it did not do to believe all these old legends. Most old families had them, he believed. ”

“ Thesiger and Amelia——”
“Amelia! I really must say! No, I was alluding to Mr. Thesiger's attentions to dear Ernestine. Most marked. In dear Frederick's place I should have found some excuse for shortening Mr. Thesiger's visit. But of course I cannot interfere. Gentlemen must manage these things for themselves. I only hope that there will be none of that trifling with the most holy affections of others which——”
The less voluble aunt cut in hotly with “Ernestine's incapable of anything so unladylike.” ”

“ The certificate said nothing, and Frederick said nothing of the creeper that was wound about the dead man's neck, nor of the little white wounds, like little bloodless lips half-open, that they found about the dead man's neck.
“An imaginative or uneducated person,” said the doctor, “might suppose that the creeper had something to do with his death. But we mustn't encourage superstition. I will assist my man to prepare the body for its last sleep. ”

“ There were croquet parties and archery parties and little dances, all pleasant informal gaieties arranged without ceremony among people who lived within driving distance of each other and knew each other's tastes and incomes and family history as well as they knew their own. ”

“ Quite a number of plainish girls achieve that effect nowadays. The freedom of modern dress and coiffure and the increasing confidence in herself which the modern girl experiences aid her in fostering the illusion ”

“ And Amelia noticed that the trails of creeper had not been disturbed; they grew across the doorway as thick as a man's finger, some of them.
“He must have got in by one of the windows,” Frederick said. “Your dagger comes in handy, Miss Davenant.”
He slashed at the wet, sticky green stuff and put his shoulder to the door. It yielded at a touch and they went in.
The one candle lighted the pavilion hardly at all, and the dusky light that oozed in through the door and windows helped very little. And the silence was thick and heavy.
“Thesiger!” said Frederick, clearing his throat. “Thesiger! ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1924, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 99 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”