It did not contain anything more.
Now, Mrs. Potten really believed in ghosts, but she thought of them as dreary, uninteresting intruders on the world's history. There was Hamlet's father's ghost that spoke at such length, and there was the spirit that made Abraham's hair stand on end as it passed before him, and then there was the ghost of Samuel that appeared to Saul and prophesied evil. But of all ghosts, the one that Mrs. Potten thought most dismal, was the ghost of the man-servant who came out from a mansion, full of light and music, one winter night on a Devon bye-road. There he stood in the snow directing the lost travellers to the nearest inn, and (this was what struck Mrs. Potten's soul to the core) the half-crown (an actual precious piece of money) that was dropped into his hand—fell through the palm—on to the snow—and so the travellers knew that they had spoken to a spirit, and were leaving behind them a ghostly house with ghostly lights and the merriment of the dead.
Mrs. Potten's mind worked in columns, and had she been calm and happy she would have spent the time returning to Potten End in completing the list of ghosts she was acquainted with; but she was excited and full of tumultuous thoughts.
There was, indeed, in Mrs. Potten's soul the strife of various passions: there was the desire to act in a high-handed, swift Potten manner, the desire to pursue and flatten any one who invaded the Potten preserves. There was the desire to put her heavy individual foot upon a specimen of the modern female who betrays the honour and the interest of her own class. There was also the general desire to show a fool that she was a fool. There was also the desire to snub Belinda Scott; and lastly, but not least, there was the desire to put her knife into any giddy young girl who had thrown her net over the Warden.
These desires fought tooth and nail with a certain dogged sentiment of fear—a fear of the Warden. If he was deeply in love, what might he do or not do? Would he put Potten End under a ban? Would he excommunicate her, Marian Potten?
And so Mrs. Potten's mind whirled.
At a certain shop in the High there was May Dashwood, looking at a window full of books. No doubt Lady Dashwood was inside, or, more probably, in the shop next door.
An inspiration came to Mrs. Potten. Was the Warden so very much in love? Belinda Scott laid great stress on his being very much in love, and the whole thing being a surprise! Belinda Scott was a liar! And the little daughter who could stoop to thieving ten shillings at a bazaar, might well have been put on by her mother to some equally noxious behaviour to the Warden. She might have lain in wait for him behind doors and on staircases; she might——Mrs. Potten stopped her car, got out of it, and went behind May Dashwood and whispered in her ear.
May turned, her eyebrows very much raised, and listened to what Mrs. Potten had to say.
Great urgency made Mrs. Potten as astute as a French detective.