The abominable and damnable exercises practised by the wicked dowager caused the dark-eyed Lady Stancroft, who had come among strangers out of the far-away kingdom of Spain, to wither up and grow old and loathsome in a year. So that the young lord turned away from her, and cared nothing for her any more. And the poor young lady, gap-toothed and wrinkled and foul-looking as she had been made by devilish witchcraft, was still young in her mind and her affections, and doated on the lord, who would not as much as come nigh the Castle while she was there, but took to wine and evil ways.
So at last the poor young wife, who looked eighty, was lost, and could be found nowhere. It was long after, and in the time of the next lord, that, in the topmost chamber of the round gate-tower, a chamber never used save in war-time, they discovered the skeleton of the young wife, and words written in a strange tongue, the language of Spain, saying how she had stolen up there to die, as she could not win back the love of her husband, the young lord. Ever after that the topmost chamber of the tower was red at sunset. Some thought this red gleam came from the fire where the wicked dowager Lady Stancroft suffered for her great sin; others thought this was the reflection from the wreath of glory worn by the poor young wife. But all agreed it had to do with the deed of the wicked Lady Stancroft; and so they called the tower the Witch's Tower, a name it bore until Walter Grey gave it another.
The year 1856 was one full of remarkable events in the life of Mr. Grey. In it his father died; he came into a considerable fortune; he purchased a house; and grew to be a frequent visitor at Island Castle. It often struck him as a peculiar coincidence that in the same year he should have become owner of the most remarkable house near Daneford, and caretaker to the fortune of the owner of the most remarkable house in the whole district.
About that time he read an account of a certain tree said to be in sympathy with a certain tower. The idea was fresh to him, and seemed to open up a new field of speculation, and he dwelt upon it a good deal.
One evening, as he was rowing from the Castle to his own home, a thought flashed into his mind. There was a striking coincidence in the fact of his being connected so closely with two such houses. Each was unpopular, each was weird, strange; there were queer stories about each, each had a tower. The tower of one had an unpleasant history connected with the skeleton of that poor Spanish lady; the tower on his house had that rusty framework of a tank that looked like a skeleton. "Might not," he thought, with a smile at the absurdity, "there be some sympathy between these two houses?"
He ceased to row, and looked at the vast pile that brooded over the dark waters of the Weeslade. He rested upon his oars.
"It looks, if like anything human, like a witch charming the river. My house, too, looks like a witch sitting at bay within her magic circle of grove. It wouldn't be bad to name them both The Weird Sisters. They are uglier than the crones in 'Macbeth.'"
He pulled a few strokes and mused again, resting on his oars.
"They don't use that tower. I don't use my tower. They found the skeleton of the Spanish Lady Stancroft in the top of that tower. There's the skeleton of that old tank on the top of mine. Towers and skeletons suggest Bombay and the Parsees. By Jove, the Towers of Silence would not be a bad name for those two."
Next day he told several people the names he had given the two houses and the two towers. All who heard of the new nomenclature smiled, and admired the cleverness; and from that time forth in Daneford the two houses were known as the Weird Sisters, and the two towers as the Towers of Silence.