"Who? little Connie?"
"Of course I mean Miss Vivian, Mrs. Bowyer. Don't you know the village is all in a tremble about the ghost at the Great House?"
"Oh yes, I know, and it is very strange. I can't help thinking, doctor,—"
"We had better not discuss that subject. Of course I don't put a moment's faith in any such nonsense. But girls are full of fancies. I want you to find out for me whether she has begun to think she sees anything. She looks like it; and if something isn't done she will soon do so, if not now."
"Then you do think there is something to see," said Mrs. Bowyer, clasping her hands; "that has always been my opinion: what so natural—?"
"As that Lady Mary, the greatest old aristocrat in the world, should come and make private revelations to Betsey Barnes, the under housemaid—?" said the doctor, with a sardonic grin.
"I don't mean that, doctor; but if she could not rest in her grave, poor old lady—"
"You think, then, my dear," said the vicar, "that Lady Mary, an old friend, who was as young in her mind as any of us, lies body and soul in that old dark hole of a vault?"
"How you talk, Francis! what can a woman say between you horrid men? I say if she couldn't rest,—wherever she is,—because of leaving Mary destitute, it would be only natural,—and I should think the more of her for it," Mrs. Bowyer cried.
The vicar had a gentle professional laugh over the confusion of his wife's mind. But the doctor took the matter more seriously. "Lady Mary is safely buried and done with, I am not thinking of her," he said; "but I am thinking of Mary Vivian's senses, which will not stand this much longer. Try and find out from her if she sees anything: if she has come to that, whatever she says we must have her out of there."