Appealed to in these direct terms, Betsey contrived, with much circumlocution and confusion, to relate what her own personal experience had been of the proceedings of Mrs. Jazeph and her foreign companion. When she had done, Rosamond stopped her on her way to the door by asking this question—
"You say the lady was found lying in a fainting-fit at the top of the stairs. Have you any notion, Betsey, why she fainted?"
The servant hesitated.
"Come! come!" said Rosamond. "You have some notion, I can see. Tell us what it is."
"I'm afraid you will be angry with me, ma'am," said Betsey, expressing embarrassment by drawing lines slowly with her forefinger on a table at her side.
"Nonsense! I shall only be angry with you if you won't speak. Why do you think the lady fainted?"
Betsey drew a very long line with her embarrassed forefinger, wiped it afterward on her apron, and answered—
"I think she fainted, if you please, ma'am, because she see the ghost."
"The ghost! What! is there a ghost in the house? Lenny, here is a romance that we never expected. What sort of ghost is it? Let us have the whole story."
The whole story, as Betsey told it, was not of a nature to afford her hearers any extraordinary information, or to keep them very long in suspense. The ghost was a lady who had been at a remote period the wife of one of the owners of Porthgenna Tower, and who had been guilty of deceiving her husband in some way unknown. She had been condemned in consequence to walk about the north rooms as long as ever the walls of them held together. She had long, curling, light-brown hair, and very white teeth, and a dimple in each cheek, and was altogether "awful beautiful" to look at. Her approach was heralded to any mortal creature who was unfortunate enough to fall in her way by the blowing of a cold wind, and nobody who had once felt that wind had the slightest chance of ever feeling warm again. That was all Betsey knew about the ghost; and it was in her opinion enough to freeze a person's blood only to think of it.