Really, ghosts could be exceedingly nice when they liked. Mivanway
bent graciously towards her shadowy suppliant, and, as she did so,
her eye caught sight of something on the grass beside it, and that
something was a well-coloured meerschaum pipe. There was no
mistaking it for anything else, even in that treacherous light; it
lay glistening where Charles, in falling upon his knees had jerked
it from his breast-pocket.
Charles, following Mivanway's eyes, saw it also, and the memory of
the prohibition against smoking came back to him.
Without stopping to consider the futility of the action--nay, the
direct confession implied thereby--he instinctively grabbed at the
pipe, and rammed it back into his pocket; and then an avalanche of
mingled understanding and bewilderment, fear and joy, swept
Mivanway's brain before it. She felt she must do one of two
things, laugh or scream and go on screaming, and she laughed. Peal
after peal of laughter she sent echoing among the rocks, and
Charles springing to his feet was just in time to catch her as she
fell forward a dead weight into his arms.
Ten minutes later the eldest Miss Evans, hearing heavy footsteps,
went to the door.
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