“What is that you are saying, St. Erth?” called the Dowager, breaking off her conversation with Ulverston. “You are talking a great deal of nonsense! If any such thing were to happen I would be excessively displeased, for Calne has orders to lock the gates every night.”
“Ah, ma’am, but what can locked gates avail against a phantom?”
“Phantom! Let me assure you that we have nothing of that sort at Stanyon! I should not countenance it; I do not approve of the supernatural.”
Her disapproval was without its effect, the gentlemen continuing to tease Marianne with accounts of spectres, and Martin achieving a decided success with a very horrid monkish apparition, which, when it raised its head, was seen to have only a skull under its cowl. “It is known as the Black Monk of Stanyon,” he informed Marianne. “It — it appears only to the head of the house, and then as a death-warning!”
She turned her eyes involuntarily towards Gervase. “Oh, no!” she said imploringly, hardly knowing whether to be horrified or diverted. “You are not serious!”
“Hush!” he said, in an earnest tone. “Martin should not have disclosed to you the Secret of Stanyon: we never speak of it! It is a very dreadful sight.”
“Well, I don’t know how you should know that,”remarked Miss Morville, a good deal amused. “You cannot have seen it, after all!”
“My dear Miss Morville, what makes you think so?”
“You are not dead!” she pointed out.
“Not yet! ”struck in Ulverston, in sepulchral accents. “We cannot tell, however, when we may find him stiff in his bed, his fingers still clutching the bell-rope, and an expression on his face of the greatest terror!”