"
She sprang to his side, and putting her arm around his neck said,
"Graydon, on the evening after your return I told you I couldn't be
your sister. You know why now, and you uttered these words, 'I shall
have to take you as you are if I ever find out.' I meant to win you
if I could, but only by being such a girl as I thought you would love.
Now you know the mystery of the little ghost, and you can bring to me
that 'idiot' who didn't return my love, as often as you choose."
"Thank Heaven for what I escaped! Thank God for what I have won!" he
exclaimed.
"Won? Nonsense! _You_ have been won, not I. Oh, Graydon, wouldn't you
have been amazed and horrified if you had been told, years ago, that
the little ghost would go deliberately to work to woo a man and take
him from another girl? Think how dreadful it sounds! but you shall now
know the worst."
"It's music that will fill my life with gladness. How exquisitely fine
your nature is, that you could do this with such absolute maidenly
reserve! Suppose I had become Stella Wildmere's bondman?"
"I should have gone back to Santa Barbara, and kept my secret."
"Horrible!"
"I said you knew all, but I am mistaken. Now, don't be shocked back
into your kind of unconsciousness again.
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