Sir Gilbert gave vent to an impatient snort. “Here, Mrs. Burton,” he said in a tone of grave displeasure, “take this idiot away and give her a good talking to. If I hear any more of this nonsense she shall be sent about her business at a moment’s notice.”
Lady Pell, Ethel, and Luigi were standing together just outside the window.
“It is the Grey Brother whom the girl believes she has seen.”
“And who is the Grey Brother, Lady Pell, if I may take the liberty of asking?” queried Luigi.
Lady Pell bit her lip. She had spoken aloud without intending to do so. “The Grey Brother, Mr. Clare, is the family spectre,” she said behind her fan. “But not a word of this before your grandfather, unless you wish to have your head snapped off.”
CHAPTER XXX.
AN UNEXPECTED MEETING
It was evident that Sir Gilbert Clare was very much put out by the scene just enacted on the terrace. As soon as the last of the servants had gone back indoors he re-entered the drawing-room, where Trant now proceeded to light the centre lamp and the candles in the girandoles, and resumed his seat by Lady Pell. Luigi and Ethel, at the opposite end of the long room, were engaged in turning over a book of foreign photographs. He was always glad to put as wide a space as possible between his “grandfather” and himself, and she had tact enough to be aware that after so untoward an interruption, the baronet might not be in the humour for any more music.
“Now, who,” said Sir Gilbert, “can have put the notion into that silly girl’s head about the so-called Grey Brother? (Of course you know the family legend, Louisa.) She has only been about half-a-year in my service, and, if I remember aright, she came to us all the way from Sussex.”
“But she did not mention the Grey Brother by name, did she?” queried her ladyship. “As I understood her, what she said was, that when opposite the drawing-room windows she was confronted by a tall, dark, hooded figure—nothing more specific than that.”
“And what could such a description refer to, pray, except to the Grey Brother? I suppose that in the servants’ hall such legends die hard, and that any story, or incident which savours of the supernatural, is handed down from one generation of domestics to another. If we could get to the bottom of the affair, I have no doubt we should find that this Sussex girl has had the legend recounted to her by somebody, and that it so impressed her imagination that the first time she finds herself alone in the grounds in the dusk of evening, she is prepared to distort every queer-looking shrub or bush into a semblance of the family apparition, and, indeed, would feel herself rather aggrieved than otherwise should it fail to appear to her. You may rely upon it, that girl Ogden will be the heroine of the servants’ hall for half a year to come.”