The family who had held Yewcroft since feudal times, the Blue Lady’s own family, showed with old age a preference for sleep, and inasmuch as an ungrateful populace refused to pay them for this function, reduced means led to the abandonment of Yewcroft. It was taken by Lord Silthirsk, who had made tinned meat and a million by methods equally ambiguous. He turned the moss-hung chapel into a garage, and fitted electric light throughout the Hall.
The Blue Lady, struck in every vulnerable part, resolved to drive the Silthirsks out. For the first three days of their residence she missed no chance of floating in on Lady Silthirsk at moments likely to embarrass her. Her Ladyship showed no symptoms of annoyance or of fear, though sometimes, if not alone, she would look up and say, “Oh, here’s that blue one again,” in tones which the blue one took to be of terror cleverly concealed. On the fourth day the Silthirsks had a niece to stay, and the Blue Lady embraced this as a chance to learn what real impression she had made. Waiting till dessert was on the table, so that her Ladyship might not think it necessary to hide her fear before the servants, she swept into the dining-room and passed close beside the niece.
Elfrida shuddered. “What was that?” she cried.
“What’s what?” asked her aunt; while her uncle said “Banana,” and fell to his dessert again.
“No—something cold: it made me shudder, just as if something had gone by.”
The Blue Lady, ambushed behind a vast tooled-leather screen, gloated over her success.
“Oh, that!” said Lady Silthirsk: “that’s one of the fixtures—a spook. We rather like her—it’s so picturesque and old-world, ain’t it? Some people can see her—I always can. She’s blue—quite an inoffensive mauvy blue. Oh, I distinctly like her. She’s a novelty, ye know: and she’ll be so cooling in the summer!”
But even she started at the ghastly groan which issued from behind the leather screen.
For some weeks the Blue Lady did not deign to show herself, until Lady Silthirsk began to find fault. The landlord, she implied, had swindled her. It became clear to the spectre that all hopes of driving out these upstarts by terror had been idle dreams.
And now, on Christmas Eve, the night dedicate of old to her compatriots, she had given herself up to despair. She did not even care to walk. She wailed disconsolately in the Panelled Room.