arm with both her hands.
"Don't you know who I am? I'm the ghost's wife!"
Her manner was not only exceedingly unpleasant; it was, in a sense, uncanny-so uncanny that, in spite of herself, Madge could not help a startled look coming into her face. The appearance of this look seemed to amuse her tormentor. She broke into a continuous peal of unmelodious laughter.
"I'm the ghost's wife!" she kept repeating. "I'm the ghost's wife."
Madge Brodie prided herself on her strength of nerve, and as, a rule, not without cause. But, on that occasion, almost for the first time in her life it played her false. She would have been glad to have been able to scream and flee; but she was incapable even of doing that. The other seemed to hold her spellbound; she was conscious that her senses were reeling-that, unless something happened soon, she would faint.
But from that final degradation she was saved.
"Madge," exclaimed a voice, "who is this woman?"
It was Ella Duncan, and with her was Jack Martyn. At the sound of the voice, the woman released her hold. Never before had Madge been sensible of such a spasm of relief. She rushed to Ella with a hysterical sob.
"Oh, Ella!" she cried, "how thankful I am you've come."
Ella looked at her with surprise.
"Madge! – who is this woman?"
The woman in question spoke for herself. She threw up her arms.
"I'm the ghost's wife!" she shrieked, "I'm the ghost's wife!"
Before they had suspected her purpose, or could say anything to stop her, she had rushed out of the room and from the house.
CHAPTER III
TWO LONE, LORN YOUNG WOMEN
Ella and Jack eyed each other. Madge took refuge in a chair, conscious of a feeling of irritation at her weakness now that the provocation had passed. Ella regarded her curiously.
"What's the matter with you, Madge? What's happened?"
"It's nothing-only that horrible woman has upset me."
"Who is she? and what's she been doing? and what's she want?"
"I don't know who she is, or what she wants, or anything at all about her. I only know that she's prevented me getting anything for your tea."
"That's all right-we've got something, haven't we, Jack?" Jack waved a parcel. "But whatever did you let such an extraordinary-looking creature into the house for? and whatever did she mean by screaming out that she's a ghost's wife? Is she very mad?"
"I think she is-and I didn't let her in."
Then, while they were preparing tea, the tale was told, or at least a part of it. But even that part was enough to make Jack Martyn grave. As the telling proceeded, he grew graver and graver, until, at the end, he wore a face of portentous gloom. When they seated themselves to the meal he made precisely the remark which they had expected him to make. He rested his hands on his knees, and he solemnly shook his head.
"This comes of your being alone in the house!"
Ella laughed.
"There! now you've started him on his own particular crotchet; he'll never let you hear the last of this."
Jack went on.
"I've said before, and I say again, and I shall keep on saying, that you two girls ought not to live alone by yourselves in a house in this out-of-the-way corner of the world."
"Out-of-the-way corner of the world! – on Wandsworth Common!"
"For all practical intents and purposes you might as well be in the middle of the Desert of Sahara; you might shriek and shriek and I doubt if any one would hear you. This agreeable visitor of Madge's might have cut her throat from ear to ear, or chopped her into mincemeat, and she would have been as incapable of summoning assistance as if she had been at the top of Mont Blanc."
"That's it. Jack-pile it on!"
"I don't think it's fair of you to talk like that, Ella; I'm not piling it on; I'm just speaking the plain and simple truth. Honestly, Madge, when you've been alone in the house all day long, haven't you felt that you were at the mercy of the first evil-disposed person who chose to come along; or, if you haven't felt it before, don't you think you'll feel it now?"
"No-to both your questions."
"Supposing this woman comes back again to-morrow?"
Madge had to bite her lip to repress a shudder; the idea was not a pleasant one.
"She won't come back."
"But suppose she does? – and from what you say I think it very probable that she will; if not to-morrow, then the day after."
"If she comes the day after to-morrow she'll find me out; I shall be out all day."
"There's a confession! It's only because you know that you will be out that you're able to face the prospect with equanimity."
"You are not entitled to infer anything of the kind."
Ella interposed, perceiving that the girl was made uncomfortable by the man's persistence.
"Don't do quite so much supposing, Jack; let me do a little for a change. Suppose we lived in one of those flats in the charming neighbourhood of Chancery Lane or Bloomsbury, after which-vicariously-your soul so hankers, how much better off should we be there?"
"You would, at any rate, be within the reach of assistance."
"No more so than we are now, because, quite probably, the kind of neighbours we should be likely to have in the sort of flat we should be able to afford would be worse-much worse-than none at all. The truth is that two lonely, hard-up girls-desperately hard-up girls-will be lonely wherever they are. We are quite prepared for that. Only we intend to choose the particular kind of loneliness which we happen to prefer-don't we, Madge?"
"Of course we do."
"It makes me wild to hear you say such things. Rather than you should feel like that, I'd marry on nothing."
"Thank you, but I wouldn't. I find it quite hard enough to be single on nothing."
"You know what I mean; I don't mean actually on nothing. I was reckoning it up the other night. My income-"
"Your income's like mine, Jack-capable of considerable increment. And would you be so kind as to change the subject?"
But the thing was easier said than done. Jack's thoughts had been started in a groove, and they kept in it; the conversation was continually reverting to the subject of the girls' loneliness. His last words as he left the room were on the familiar theme.
"I grant that there are advantages in having a pretty little place like this all to yourselves, especially when you get it at a peppercorn rent; and that it's nice to be your own mistresses, and all that kind of thing. But in the case of you two girls the disadvantages are so many and so serious, that I wonder you don't see them more clearly for yourselves. Anyhow, Madge has had her first peep at them to-day, and I sincerely hope it will be her
