The crucial moment arrived—no one breathed—the Things from the Grave reached Walter—there was no hesitation—they passed RIGHT THROUGH him. I looked at the wall, I rubbed my eyes—the spectres had vanished!
A convulsive throb now ran through the assemblage, the revellers exchanged frightened and embarrassed glances, there was a general movement to the door, the room emptied, the dance was over.
*****
I did not see her ladyship again—I merely received a message of farewell, but Robert came to say good-bye.
“I wonder,” he said, gazing at me with his pensive harrowed eyes, “I wonder very much if the ghosts appeared to you when alone in that room? If so you have indeed been brave, and to keep it secret served us right. The story of the hauntings,” he continued, “has up to the present been revealed only to the male members of our family, but to you I feel that an explanation is due. At any rate, you are a Wentworth and have given me ample proof that you may with safety be entrusted with a secret.
“It seems years ago that one of my ancestors got entangled in some way or another with a beautiful gipsy. She begged him to marry her; he refused; and fearful lest the affair should leak out and so bring discredit upon the family, he murdered her, burying her body, together with that of her child, underneath the ballroom floor. At least so the MS. states, and no one, as far as I am aware, has ever disproved it.
“Tortured with remorse and a victim to the orthodox fears of a murderer, my unhappy forefather took poison, commanding in his will ‘that the ballroom should never again be used for a frivolous purpose,’ an injunction which, until last night, has been faithfully obeyed.
“The Wentworths, as you may naturally suppose, have kept the story strictly to themselves—the male heirs alone being usually acquainted with it.
“I did not altogether credit the story of the haunting though my father swore he had seen the cursed apparitions. Moreover he told me that they appeared periodically—every night at 11 P.M. from the 20th to the 31st of December. He also warned me, and here I am much to blame, on no account to permit any outsider to be in the room, ‘for if you do,’ he added, ‘THEN, something terrible will happen.’ I own I was sceptical and bitterly I regret it now. I had never seen an apparition, and what my father told me he had seen, I attributed to Suggestion, the natural consequence of dwelling too much on the horrible details of the story.