"How charmingly poetical!" whispered the tripeman's son to Miss Clarissa Jemima: "only think, dearest—a haunted house!"
"Yes, Tedworth—I do indeed think——"
"What? beloved one!" asked the sentimental swain.
"That I hope we shall leave it before it grows dusk," returned the young lady, who evidently saw nothing poetical in the matter at all.
"My dear aunt," said Egerton, in reply to the observation which his relative had addressed to him, "I am not so silly as to be frightened by tales of ghosts and spirits; and I would as soon sleep in this room as in any other throughout the mansion."
"No, you wouldn't, young man—no, indeed, you wouldn't!" exclaimed the gardener, in so earnest and impressive a manner that the young ladies huddled together like terrified lambs, and even the gentlemen now began to listen to the old man with more attention than they had hitherto shown: "I say, sir, that you would not like to sleep in this room—for, as sure as there is a God above us, have me and my wife seen the sperret of Gilbert Vernon standing at dusk in that very balcony which he throwed his-self from."
"Dear! dear!" whispered all the young ladies together.
"And what was he like?" asked Mrs. Bustard.
"Why, ma'am," returned the gardener, "he was dressed all in deep black; but his face were as pale as a corpse's; and when the moonbeams fell on it, me and my wife could see that it was the face of a dead man as well as I can see e'er a one of you at this present speaking."
"Egad! you have bought a nice property, Egerton," said Lord Dunstable, turning towards his young friend. "I shall propose that we return to London again before it grows dusk."