"But I saw a woman—a woman standing here—here by the bed," gasped the terrified girl. "I saw you help to drag her out of the room."
"Nonsense, my dear; you've been dreaming. That's nightmare. Go to sleep and don't talk such foolishness."
The girl lay awake all night. In the morning she went to the housekeeper and said that she must go. She couldn't stop another night in the place after what she had seen.
The housekeeper heard her story and told her she was fancying things—there was nobody of that sort in the house. But, of course, if the girl wanted to go she could.
The girl left, and went to the agency to explain matters, and to ask them to get her another situation.
The manageress of the agency listened to her story and said nothing. But she remembered that two years previously a servant on their books had left through seeing something of the same sort. On that occasion the girl had described it as a ghost.
The truth of the matter was this. The apparition was that of a mad woman—the daughter of the house, a woman of five-and-thirty. Her father and mother had engaged a female keeper, and kept the poor demented creature at home. Ordinarily she was quiet enough. But at times she became cunning or violent, and, escaping from the apartment at the top of the house in which she was kept, made her way into a room occupied by others.
The family entertained and had frequent visitors, but only the most intimate of their relatives knew that in the upper part of the house there was a mad woman under restraint.
There is a fine house standing in its own grounds in the northern part of London. It is occupied by a wealthy family, and none of the large staff of servants are presumably aware of the secret that the family jealously guard.
All they know is that the upper part of one wing of the house, which they never enter, is occupied by their mistress's father, an old gentleman, who is bedridden, and is rather eccentric and dislikes strange faces. For this reason he has his own valet and an aged man-servant to attend to him, and these are the only people, with the exception of the master and mistress, who ever go into that part of the house.