"His appears. I'll stand to that. And what's more, I'll stand to it that I saw it last night!" cried Lizzy Dene, looking up and speaking in strong, fierce jerks, as she was in the habit of doing. "I sat up in the bedroom sewing. It's that new black silk polka of mine that I wanted to finish, and if I got it about downstairs, Madam Hill would go on above a bit about finery. Emma got into bed and lay awake talking, her and me. Before I'd done, my piece of candle came to an end, and I thought I'd go into Harriet's room and borrow hers. It was a lovely night, the moon shone slantways in at the turret window, and something took me that I'd have a look out. So I went up the turret stairs and stood at the casement. I'd not been there a minute before I saw it—the living image of Mr. Chandos!—and I thought I should have swooned away. Ask Emma."
"Well, I say it might have been Mr. Chandos himself, but it never was his ghost," argued Harriet.
"You might be a soft, but I daresay you'd stand to it you are not," retorted Lizzy. "Don't I tell you that in the old days we saw that apparition when Mr. Harry was safe in his bed? When we knew him to be in his bed with that attack of fever he had? I saw it twice then with my own eyes. And once, when Mr. Harry was miles and miles away—gone over to that French place where Miss Emily was at school—it came again. Half the household saw it; and a fine commotion there was! Don't tell me, girl! I've lived in the family seven years. I came here before old Sir Thomas died."
There was a pause. Harriet, evidently not discomfited, whisked away her iron to the stove, changed it, and came back again before she spoke.
"I don't know anything about back times; the present ones is enough for me. Did you see this, Emma, last night?"
"Yes I did," replied Emma, who was a silent and rather stupid-looking girl, with a very retreating chin. "Lizzy Dene came rushing back into the room, saying the ghost had come again, and I ran after her up to the turret window. Something was there, safe enough."
"Who was it like?"
"Mr. Chandos. There was no mistaking him: one does not see a tall, thin, upright man like him every day. There was his face, too, and his beautiful features quite plain; the moon gave a light like day."
"It was himself, as I said," coolly contended Harriet.
"It was not," said Lizzy. "Mr. Chandos would no more have been dancing in and out of the trees in that fashion, like a jack-in-the-box, than he'd try to fly in the air. It was the ghost at its tricks again."