‘Yes, it is very bad news. They have never gone after all, Mrs Dunstan, and Jack is so vexed I should have left Mudlianah before he started.’
‘But now you are here, you will not think of returning directly, I hope,’ says Ethel, in an anxious voice.
‘Oh no, I suppose not—it would be so childish—that is, unless Jack wishes me to do so. But I have hardly recovered from the effects of the journey yet; those transits shake so abominably. No, I shall certainly stay here for a few weeks, unless my husband orders me to return.’
Yet Mrs Lawless appears undecided and restless from that moment, which Mrs Dunstan ascribes entirely to her wish to return to Mudlianah, and her flirtation with the colonel, and the suspicion makes her receive any allusions to such a contingency with marked coolness. Cissy Lawless busies herself going amongst the natives, and talking with them about the late disturbances at the castle, and her report is not satisfactory.
‘Are you easily frightened, Mrs Dunstan?’ she asks her one day suddenly.
‘No, I think not. Why?’
‘Because you must think me a fool if you like, but I am; and the stories your servants have told me have made me quite nervous of remaining at the castle.’
‘A good excuse to leave me and go back to Mudlianah,’ thinks Mrs Dunstan; and then she draws herself up stiffly, and says, ‘Indeed! You must be very credulous if you believe what natives say. What may these dreadful stories consist of?’
‘Oh! I daresay you will turn them into ridicule, because, perhaps, you don’t believe in ghosts.’