Her brother, Mark by name, began to laugh, after the manner of brothers.
"How very oddly you express yourself!" he said. "I should like to experience 'a ghosty feeling'. A ghost is just what this place wants to make it perfect. But it should be the spirit of one of the original monks."
Mr. Raynald turned to his son rather sharply.
"I don't want any nonsense of that kind set about, Mark," he said. "It would frighten the younger children when they come down here. I will ask about the old man. It is quite possible he is half-witted, or something of that sort. I forgot about it when Sybil mentioned it before. But no doubt he is perfectly harmless. Has no one seen him but you, Sybil?"
The girl shook her head.
"None of us," she replied. "And I wasn't exactly frightened. There was something very pathetic about him. He looked at me closely, murmuring some words, and then shook his head. That was all."
But just then her father was called away to give some last directions, and in the bustle of hurry to catch their train the matter passed from the minds of the younger as well as the elder members of the family.
It returned to Sybil's memory, however, when she found herself in their London house again, and called upon by her younger sisters to relate every detail of Monksholdings and its neighbourhood. But mindful of her father's warning, she said nothing to Esther or Annis of the figure at the gate. It was only to Miss March—Ellinor March—the dearly-loved governess, who was more friend than teacher to her three pupils, that she spoke of it, late in the evening, when the younger ones had gone to bed, and her father and mother were busy with Indian letters in Mr. Raynald's study.
The two girls, we may say—for Ellinor was still some years under thirty—were alone in the drawing-room. Ellinor had been playing something tender and faintly weird—it died away under her fingers, and she sat on at the piano in silence.
Sybil spoke suddenly.