“That’s strange. I felt someone looking at me from the doorway.”

“Ned, you’re dreaming tonight,” Margaret rallied him, laughing. “He felt eyes on him while we were in the garden.”

“Then they must, have been mine,” Clare said, sitting up. “I was watching Margaret while she sang.”

Ned and Margaret exchanged glances; both colored and laughed, but Clare’s pale face remained impassive. They exchanged glances again; Clare could not have seen that first rapture of their love, after all.

-3-

It was nearly midnight when the sisters finally retired to the room they shared together. There had been a bottle of old port opened that the healths of the young pair might be toasted. And it seemed that the hours had only been minutes, to Margaret.

“Clare darling, I’ve kept you up awfully late tonight,” she apologized with compunction, turning a flushed, happy face to her sister. “You should have been in bed ages ago.”

“This is a special night, Margie.”

“Wasn’t it magnificent?” Margaret’s voice dropped into an almost solemn key as she stopped brushing out her wonderful auburn hair. “It seemed to—us—that there had never been such a night before.”

“I thought much the same. But, Margie, did it seem to you—don’t tell me I’m imagining things, please—did it seem to you that there was something strange, something almost awful, about the beauty of the garden tonight? I was really afraid of it, and I have never felt that way before. But tonight, it actually seemed that there was a presence abroad, a presence that boded no good to someone.”

Margaret, her smooth forehead wrinkled, whirled about suddenly to face her sister.

“That’s odd,” she commented briskly. “Ned complained of the very same feeling. He declared that he felt jealous, envious eyes upon him.”

Clare tumbled over into bed and turned her face from her sister. She slipped something under her pillow as she did so—it was Ned’s handkerchief. In a smothered voice she said. “Margie! That was not a heart attack I had this evening.”

“Clare dear, you are dreaming. If it wasn’t a heart attack, what was it?”

“That is just what I would give worlds to know,” answered the other girl earnestly. “Margie, there was something strange in our garden tonight, something no one could see—but it was there, nevertheless. And—I know what it was! Oh, don’t turn out the light, Margie! I just can’t sleep in the dark tonight.”

Such unusual timidity on Clare’s part made Margaret look at her sister searchingly. Then she sat on the edge of the bed and began to smooth the brown hair gently.

“And what was it you saw in the garden?” she inquired, with a touch of light humor in her tone.