"I am quite in despair," she exclaimed, flinging herself into a chair, with short ceremony. "These three days have I been expecting news of an invalid friend; and it does not come. I hope and trust she is not dead!"
"Perhaps she is unable to write?"
"She is. I said news of her; not from her. When I saw the postman come in at the gates just now, hope rose up within me, and I ran to meet him. But hope was false. The man brought me no letter, nothing but disappointment."
I am not sure but I must have had a wicked heart about that time. Instead of feeling sympathy with Mrs. Penn and her sick friend, a sort of doubt came over me, that she was only saying this to excuse her having stopped the postman. She untied the strings of her black lace bonnet, and rose, saying she supposed breakfast would be ready by the time she got upstairs.
"Mrs. Penn," I interposed, taking a sudden resolution to speak, "was that a joke of yours yesterday, about Sir Thomas Chandos?"
"About his ghost, do you mean? It was certainly not my joke. Why?"
"Nothing. I have been thinking about it."
"I don't tell you the ghost comes; but I should watch if I had the opportunity. The shutters in the front of the east wing are unfortunately fastened down with iron staples. I conclude—I conclude," repeated Mrs. Penn, slowly and thoughtfully—"as a precaution against the looking out of Mrs. Chandos."
"I daresay it is the greatest nonsense in the world. A ghost! People have grown wise now."
"I daresay it may be nonsense," she rejoined. "But for one thing I should heartily say it is nothing else."