“And the joke of it is that he supposes I want to buy the place from you,” I said. “Are you selling?”
“Not for twice what I paid for it—now,” said M'Leod. “I'll keep you in furs all your life, but not our Holmescroft.”
“No—never our Holmescroft,” said Miss M'Leod. “We'll ask him here on Tuesday, mamma.” They squeezed each other's hands.
“Now tell me,” said Mrs. M'Leod—“that tall one, I saw out of the scullery window—did she tell you she was always here in the spirit? I hate her. She made all this trouble. It was not her house after she had sold it. What do you think?”
“I suppose,” I answered, “she brooded over what she believed was her sister's suicide night and day—she confessed she did—and her thoughts being concentrated on this place, they felt like a—like a burning glass.”
“Burning glass is good,” said M'Leod.
“I said it was like a light of blackness turned on us,” cried the girl, twiddling her ring. “That must have been when the tall one thought worst about her sister and the house.”
“Ah, the poor Aggie!” said Mrs. M'Leod. “The poor Aggie, trying to tell every one it was not so! No wonder we felt Something wished to say Something. Thea, Max, do you remember that night?”
“We need not remember any more,” M'Leod interrupted. “It is not our trouble. They have told each other now.”
“Do you think, then,” said Miss M'Leod, “that those two, the living ones, were actually told something—upstairs—in your in the room?”