‘Ah! You are the authority for ghosts,’ said Philip.
‘I forgot that,’ said Laura: ‘I wonder we never asked you about your Redclyffe ghost.’
‘You look as if you had seen it yourself,’ said Philip.
‘You have not?’ exclaimed Amy, almost frightened.
‘Come, let us have the whole story,’ said Philip. ‘Was it your own reflection in the glass? was it old sir Hugh? or was it the murderer of Becket? Come, the ladies are both ready to scream at the right moment. Never mind about giving him a cocked-hat, for with whom may you take a liberty, if not with an ancestral ghost of your own?’
Amy could not think how Philip could have gone on all this time; perhaps it was because he was not watching how Guy’s colour varied, how he bit his lip; and at last his eyes seemed to grow dark in the middle, and to sparkle with fire, as with a low, deep tone, like distant thunder, conveying a tremendous force of suppressed passion, he exclaimed, ‘Beware of trifling—’ then breaking off hastened out of the room.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Mr. Edmonstone, startled from his nap; and his wife looked up anxiously, but returned to her book, as her nephew replied, ‘Nothing.’
‘How could you Philip?’ said Laura.
‘I really believe he has seen it!’ said Amy, in a startled whisper.
‘He has felt it, Amy—the Morville spirit,’ said Philip.