"My friend Lord Dunstable gave you five pounds the other day as a slight recompense for your civility in allowing me the use of the Hall on this occasion. Here is another five-pound note for you; but pray be upon your guard should either of the ladies take it into their heads to question you concerning my right to this property. I, however, perceive that you are well disposed to aid me in this little innocent cheat upon my relations; and I really give you great credit for the ghost-story which you told to get rid of them all as soon as possible."
"Thank'ee kindly for the money, sir," exclaimed the gardener; "but as I'm a living sinner which hopes to be saved, every word I said up stairs about the sperret is as true as the Gospel."
"Ridiculous!" cried Egerton: "you cannot seriously believe in such a thing? Who ever heard of ghosts in these times?"
"Well, sir," said the man, in a solemn tone, "don't let's talk any more about it—'cos it might bring bad luck to disbelieve in ghosts where a ghost walks."
Egerton was about to reply; but he checked himself—remembering that it was useless to argue against a deeply-rooted superstition. He accordingly gave some instructions relative to the collation, which he ordered to be served up in the course of an hour; and, having renewed his injunctions as to caution in respect to his supposed ownership of the estate, he returned to the drawing-room where he had left the company.
CHAPTER CCXLVI.
THE PARTY AT RAVENSWORTH HALL.
During Albert Egerton's absence, the conversation in the drawing-room had at first turned upon the subject of the old gardener's statements respecting the ghost.
Lord Dunstable, Mr. Chichester, and Sir Rupert Harborough expressed their firm belief in the truth of the story—simply because they were anxious to serve their friend Egerton, and get the aunt and cousins back again to London as speedily as possible. For they feared that if an exposure were to take place, and if the deception relative to the ownership of the Hall were by any accident to transpire, the remonstrances, reproaches, and accompanying advice which Egerton's relations were certain to lavish upon him, might have the effect of reclaiming him entirely—a prospect by no means pleasant to the minds of those adventurers, who were resolved to pluck him to his very last feather.
Colonel Cholmondeley, although completely agreeing with his friends in all matters of this nature, nevertheless proclaimed his total disbelief of the ghost story. This he did simply because it would have appeared too pointed had all Egerton's friends combined unanimously in recommending that the party should return to London immediately after the collation.
"For my part," said Mr. Tedworth Jones, "I believe every word that the old man uttered. Love, poetry, and ghosts seem to me to go together. For what is love, unless the lover who loses her whom he loves, can soothe the agony of his mind by the conviction that she—the dear lost one—is ever near him in the shape of a disembodied spirit?"