“Then why not go with me and make my life one long happiness? You know my feelings, you know that I——”
“No more of that Mr. Finch, if you please. I know your feelings, and you know my sentiments. Nothing can ever change them. But don’t let us talk any more nonsense. I want you to tell me about the ghosts.”
“I don’t know that I’ve much more to tell,” said Finch, in a mortified tone.
“But about Mr. Dering—Mr. Lionel, I mean? Which of the servants was it that saw his ghost?”
“I am unable to give you any details, Miss Piper, as I never condescend to listen to the gossip of my inferiors; but I believe it to be the general talk in the servants’ hall that the ghost of Mr. Lionel has been seen three or four times slowly pacing the big corridor by moonlight.”
“How were the idiots to know that it was Mr. Lionel Dering?” asked Piper with a toss of the head. “Not one of them ever saw him when he was alive.”
“Yes, Jane Minnows saw him in court during the trial, and she knew the ghost the moment she saw it.”
“But then Jane Minnows was a terrible storyteller, and just as likely as not to invent all about the ghost simply to get herself talked about. But tell me, Mr. Finch, have you not noticed the remarkable likeness that exists between Mr. Richard Dering and his poor brother?”
“As a gentleman of discernment, Miss Piper, I have noticed the likeness of which you speak. He has the very same nose, the very same hands, the very same way of sitting in his chair. And then the voice! I give you my word of honour that when Mr. Richard yesterday called out rather suddenly ‘Finch,’ you might have knocked me down with a cork. It sounded for all the world as if my poor master had come back from the grave, and had called to me just as he used to do.”
“You are not one of those, Mr. Finch, who believed in the guilt of Mr. Dering?”