It was hardly to be expected that Irene, flushed with the proud delight
of having triumphed over the obstinate ghost of the major, could keep
her discovery to herself for so long a time as until daylight. It was
already near one in the morning, but on going to her window, and looking
across to the wing of the house where the lieutenant's rooms were, she
saw that his light was still burning. With a secret feeling that he was
probably reflecting upon the events of the afternoon, Irene sped along
the passage to the door of Fanny's chamber, whom she awakened, and
dispatched to bring Arthur.
Fanny's characteristically feminine manner of calling her brother was to
dash into his room, crying:--
"Oh, Arthur, Irene has found the McHugh diamonds!"
She was too incoherent to reply to his questions, so that there was
manifestly nothing for him to do but to follow to the place where Irene
was awaiting them. There the young couple were deserted by Fanny, who
impulsively ran on before to the haunted chamber, leaving them to
follow. As they walked along the corridor, the lieutenant, who perhaps
felt that it was well not to provoke a discussion which might call up
too vividly in Irene's mind the humiliation of the afternoon, clasped
her quite without warning, and drew her to his side.
"Now I can ask you to marry me," he said; "and I love you, Irene, with
my whole heart."
Her first movement was an instinctive struggle to free herself; but the
persuasion of his embrace was too sweet to be resisted, and she only
protested by saying, "Your love seems to depend very much upon those
detestable old diamonds."
"Of course," he answered. "Without them I am too poor to have any right
to think of you."
"Oh," she cried out in sudden terror, "suppose that they are not there!"
The young man loosened his embrace in astonishment.
"Not there!" he repeated. "Fanny said that you had found them."
"Not yet; only the ghost--"
"The ghost!" he echoed, in tones of mingled disappointment and chagrin.
"Is that all there is to it?"
Irene felt that her golden love-dream was rudely shattered. She was
aware that the lieutenant did not even believe in the existence of the
wraith of the major, and although she had been conversing with the
spirit for so long a time that very night, so great was the influence
of her lover over her mind that she began at this moment to doubt the
reality of the apparition herself.
With pale face and sinking heart she led the way into her chamber, and
to the corner where the paper-knife yet lay upon the floor in testimony
of the actuality of her interview with the wraith. Under her directions
the panel was removed from the wainscot, a labor which was not effected
without a good deal of difficulty. Arthur sneered at the whole thing,
but he yet was good-natured enough to do what the girls asked of him.
Only the dust of centuries rewarded their search. When it was fully
established that there were no jewel-cases there, poor Irene broke down
entirely, and burst into convulsive weeping.
"There, there," Arthur said soothingly. "Don't feel like that. We've got
on without the diamonds thus far, and we can still."
"It is n't the diamonds that I'm crying for," sobbed Irene, with all the
naïveté of a child that has lost its pet toy. "It's you!"
There was no withstanding this appeal. Arthur took her into his arms and
comforted her, while Fanny discreetly looked the other way; and so the
engagement was allowed to stand, although the McHugh diamonds had not
been found.