“Yes”—she looked down at me with a significant smile—“Mr. Colgate. The younger.”

“Ah,” said Papa. And then they both smiled down at me.

With this same unpleasant sensation of having been suddenly thrust out into the cold, I awoke the next morning at Grange House. Pulling the tossed bedclothes back up about me, I turned my head and looked out the window by my bed to see what manner of day lay in store. Behind the covering of gauzy white curtains hung a dense fog, from which the dark shapes of trees poked like bony fingers out of tattered gloves, promising a day passed with a good book downstairs upon the long settee.

Just as I turned away from the window, it seemed as though the fog billowed, a darker shade of gray surging forward for an instant, then retreating. I drew up on my elbow and lifted the curtain—there was nothing but a blank repeating quiet, a veritable sound of gray. No! It came again. Then the darker gray drifted slowly free.

I pushed off my covers and knelt upon the bed, my hands on either side of the window for balance, fixing the moving spot, a dull patter in my head. The fog blew between the dark trunks, leaving soft clumps upon the low branches like old women’s hair. The foghorn called out its lonely note. I blinked to make certain of what I saw. Through the fog, the dark smudge advanced toward the edge of the trees, and then—so whole and sudden as if sprung from Mr. Collins’s pen—I saw it was a figure, clad in gray.

It looked up at the House with such mortal longing, I nearly cried aloud—and for several long moments, the pale face shrouded by its gray cloak stood staring, though I could not discern the features that gazed so fixedly upon us. It remained eerily still while the fog passed cross. Then the figure lifted up a hand and simply waved. Without hesitation, my own hand lifted in reply.

The door opened behind me and there came a little shriek. “Why ever are you standing up in your bed, miss?”

“Hush,” I replied, not turning from my post, though what I had seen disappeared again beneath the covering shroud of fog.

“Ah, it’s that way this morning, is it?”

“There is someone out there, Jessie,” I said quietly, still not wishing to turn my eyes away.

“Aye, and there’s the good Lord up above, thank heavens for us all.”

The fog was lifting slightly, I could see the tree line ridging round toward Grange House point, the sharp tips just freed of the covering gray. Nothing now greeted my attention, yet I crouched upon my bed in my white shift, staring through the curtains.