“The gentleman came out from her boudoir exceeding sobered, and essaying as he might to conceal his tears.
“The words of this dying angel—for so indeed she seemed—he vowed should be as a challenge to him from God to purify his ways. And indeed from that day the gentleman made such progress in godliness as can be made by one of his complexion.
“And now a strange and terrible portent was observed.
“Those who watched by the Lady Margaret, began to see a vision, and of that most dreaded being, the White Monk!
“Night or day, it mattered not; with a chill like to that of Death itself, the horrified watchers knew the presence of the phantom. In the dark corners of the room would shape themselves dimly the features of the murderer, Rinucci, and his monastic gown, so glaring white in its dimness through the dark that the eye could not search it, and gone, ever gone, if some bold spirit neared the spot where he had thought he saw it.
“No[“No] one said aught of this to the Lady Margaret, in fear to fright her; and she alone, of all who watched, did never see nor feel the constant presence. It seemed sometimes as though the phantom yearned to make itself visible to her kind, half-divine eyes, but her thoughts were too high-set for it to be given her to see a sight so horrible.
“She was much upheld by visions then—her contemplative soul shaped to itself many fair sights and sounds that others knew not. Sitting by the open casement in her sun-coloured gown, with white arms, pearl encircled, leaning out, and her smile ever brighter as she murmured to herself, she would stretch far over the lattice and grasp at rosy clouds, which she said floated past her in the peopled air. She would reply, still leaning out and smiling, to what she vowed was said to her by wandering happy spirits. And all this while, behind her, there would stand the White Mystery, with slight hand lifting the cowl from a face whose eyes were as deep as death and more despairing.
“Small marvel that the murderer’s ghost should cling to our saint while she yet lived on earth! He may have known that, once dead, restored to Heaven, she would thenceforth move in worlds where such as he should never have the force to breathe.
“And in her due hour she died; and after that for a space no one saw aught of the dread ghost. His spirit, drawn by some power to enter our house, wherein was held all he knew of goodness, had now no further business there, for a while. His loathed name, fraught with horror to your ancestors’ home, was now never spoken. It was thought, doubtless, that since Margaret de Troyes—the innocent avenger—had unwittingly caused the murderer’s death, the house he had so deeply injured was for ever free from his godless presence. And, indeed, for a while, the chronicles are silent respecting him. The next two generations were happy, and no great misfortune blasted the house. But in the third generation there were harsh feuds in the city, and much bloodshed, and several of your name came to violent and sometimes mysterious ends. Then it was that there arose a searching into past traditions to discover the secret of a certain white spectre said to appear about the castle previous to each calamity. Not all saw it; but still it grew known, and it bore a marked resemblance to an ancient portrait—hung up for curiosity’s sake—of Pietro Rinucci.
“Well, young master, I myself served your grandfather, and I myself can bear witness to the presence of the White Monk’s ghost on one of the shrewd moments of the family destinies. Wilt hear it? So your father was then a stalwart young man, away at the wars in Spain. Your uncles, two blithe young gallants, were at home at the time I speak of, and there was some merry-making toward in the castle. Myself was seeing to the torches in the garden, when I chanced to see your uncle, Geoffrey de Troyes, come hastily into the yew-walk with his rapier drawn, followed by another youth whom I knew well, his rival, and in some sort, his enemy.