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“Oh, let us explore the rest,” she cried; “it is really a comfort not to have a guide, but only a person like you who just guesses comfortably at dates. I should hate to be told exactly when this hall was built.”

We explored ball-room and picture gallery, white parlour and library. Most of the rooms were furnished—all heavily, some magnificently—but everything was dusty and faded.

It was in the white parlour, a spacious panelled room on the first floor, that she told me the ghost story, substantially the same as my porter’s tale, only in one respect different.

“And so, just as she was leaving this very room—yes, I’m sure it’s this room, because the woman at the inn pointed out this double window and told me so—just as the poor lovers were creeping out of the door, the cruel father came quickly out of some dark place and killed them both. So now they haunt it.”

“It is a terrible thought,” said I gravely. “How would you like to live in a haunted house?”

“I couldn’t,” she said quickly.

“Nor I; it would be too” my speech