"Is he? Egad! I never perceived it." The expression was not clerical, but the speaker did not seem aware he had uttered it. "How dull I must be! Have you ever been in this part of the world before, Lady Jane?" continued he, turning towards General Lennox's wife, who sat beside him.
"I've been to Wardlock, a good many years ago; but that's a long way from this, and I almost forget it," answered Lady Jane, in her languid, haughty way.
"In what direction is Wardlock," she asked of Beatrix, raising her handsome, unfathomable eyes for a moment.
"You can see it from the bow-window of your room—I mean that oddly-shaped hill to the right."
"That's from the green chamber," said the Rector. "I remember the view. Isn't it?"
"Yes. They have put Lady Jane in the haunted room," said Beatrix, smiling and nodding to Lady Jane.
"And what fool, pray, told you that," said the Baronet, perhaps just a little sharply.
"Old Gwynn seems to think so," answered Beatrix, with the surprised and frightened look of one who fancies she has made a blunder. "I—of course we know it is all folly."
"You must not say that—you shan't disenchant us," said Lady Jane. "There's nothing I should so like as a haunted room; it's a charming idea—isn't it, Arthur?" she inquired of the General.
"We had a haunted room in my quarters at Puttypoor," observed the General, twiddling the point of one of his moustaches. "It was the store-room where we kept pickles, and olives, and preserves, and plates, and jars, and glass bottles. And every night there was a confounded noise there; jars, and bottles, and things tumbling about, made a devil of a row, you know. I got Smith—my servant Smith, you know, a very respectable man—uncommon steady fellow, Smith—to watch, and he did. We kept the door closed, and Smith outside. I gave him half-a-crown a night and his supper—very well for Smith, you know. Sometimes he kept a light, and sometimes I made him sit in the dark with matches ready."