"I mean," said Margaret, "that really and truly no part of it can possibly be any thing but fiction. Papa, you know, is a great genealogist, and he says that our ancestor, Godfrey of Holyoke, died in the Holy Land, and had two sons, but never had a daughter. Some old nurse made the tale that he died here, in the house, and had a daughter Ellen. This daughter Ellen, says the tale, was sought in marriage by a young knight who won her good-will, but could not get her father's. That Ellen—very much unlike our gentle, timid sister in the corner there—was proud and willful. She and her father quarreled. His health failed, because, the story hints mysteriously, she put a slow and subtle poison into his after-supper cup night after night. One evening they quarreled violently, and the next morning Sir Godfrey was gone. His daughter said that he had left the house in anger with her. The tale, determined to be horrible, says that she poisoned him outright, and with her own hands buried him in an old cellar under this room. That cellar-door is fastened with a padlock, to which there is no key remaining. Not being wanted, it has not been opened probably for scores of years."
"Well!"
"Well—in a year or two the daughter married, and in time had children scampering about this house. But her health failed. The children fell ill, and, excepting one or two, all died. One night—"
"Yes."
"One night she lay awake through care; and in the middle of the night a figure like her father came into the room, holding a cup like that from which he used to drink after his supper. It moved inaudibly to where she lay, placed the cup to her lips; a chill came over her. The figure passed away, but in a few minutes she heard the shutting of the cellar-door. After that she was often kept awake by dread, and often saw that she was visited. She heard the cellar-door creak on its hinge, and knew it was her father coming. Once she watched all night by the sick-bed of her eldest child; the goblin came, and put the cup to her child's lips; she knew then that her children who were dead, and she herself who was dying, and that child of hers, had tasted of her father's poison. She died young. And ever since that time, the legend says, Sir Godfrey walks at night, and puts his fatal goblet to the lips of his descendants, of the children and children's children of his cruel child. It is quite true that sickliness and death occur more frequently among those who inhabit this house than is to be easily accounted for. So story-tellers have accounted for it, as you see. But it is certain that Sir Godfrey fell in Palestine, and had no daughter."
Ellen continued playing with her face bowed down over the harpsichord. Margaret, a healthy cheerful girl, had lived generally with an old aunt in the south of England. But the two girls wore mourning. In the flower of her years their mother had departed from them, after long lingering in broken health. The bandeau seemed to have been unrolled from poor Paul's eyes, for, after a long pause, which had been filled by Ellen's music, he said:
"Ellen, did you ever see Sir Godfrey?"
She left her harpsichord and came to him, and leaning down over his shoulder, kissed him.
Was she thinking of the sorrow that would come upon him soon?
The sudden closing of a heavy door startled us all. But a loud jovial voice restored our spirits. Sir Francis had come in from his afternoon walk and gossip, and was clamoring for tea.