“I rose (for I had seated myself during his narrative), my heart was stirred with pity; I took down the Cicero, and lit on a sheet of yellow paper covered with faded manuscript, which, of course, I did not read. I turned to the hearth, tossed on the fire the sere old paper, which blazed at once, and then, hearing the words pax vobiscum, I looked round. But I was alone. After a few minutes, devoted to private ejaculations, I returned to the dining-room; and that is all my story. Your maids need no longer dread the ghost of the library. He is released.”
“Will any one take any more wine?” asked Lord Birkenhead, in tones of deep emotion. “No? Then suppose we join the ladies.”
“Well,” said one of the ladies, the Girton girl, when the squire had finished the prelate’s narrative, “I don’t call that much of a story. What was Lady Birkenhead’s confession about? That’s what one really wants to know.”
“The bishop could not possibly have read the paper,” said the Bachelor of Arts, one of the guests; “not as a gentleman, nor a bishop.”
“I wish I had had the chance,” said the Girton girl.
“Perhaps the confession was in Latin,” said the Bachelor of Arts.
The Girton girl disdained to reply to this unworthy sneer.
“I have often observed,” she said in a reflective voice, “that the most authentic and best attested bogies don’t come to very much. They appear in a desultory manner, without any context, so to speak, and, like other difficulties, require a context to clear up their meaning.”
These efforts of the Girton girl to apply the methods of philology to spectres, were received in silence. The women did not understand them, though they had a strong personal opinion about their learned author.
“The only ghost I ever came across, or, rather, came within measurable distance of, never appeared at all so far as one knew.”