"Has anything alarmed you?"
"I cannot find Madame de Mellissie's letter," was all I answered, feeling vexed with myself.
"But that is not the cause of this. Something has frightened you. Come, Miss Hereford; I must know what it is," he concluded, with that quiet command of manner so few resist.
I did not: perhaps did not care to: and told him briefly what had occurred. Not mentioning suspicions of Lizzy Dene or what she said; but simply that the woman had opened the door too hastily, thereby putting my candle out—and then on to what I had seen.
"It must have been one of the gardeners," he quietly observed. "Why should that have alarmed you?"
That the gardeners never remained in the gardens after twilight, obeying the strict orders of the house, I knew. "Not a gardener," I answered, "but a ghost." And, taking courage, I told him all I had heard—that a ghost was said to walk nightly in the grounds.
"Whose ghost?" he asked, with angry sharpness.
"Your late father's, sir; Sir Thomas Chandos."
He turned quickly to the mantelpiece, put his elbow on it, and stood there with his back to me. But that his face had looked so troubled, I might have thought he did it to indulge in a quiet laugh.
"Miss Hereford, you cannot seriously believe in such nonsense!"