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 'No, not quite. At least, I think a touch of fever came first, and then the ghost. We huddled up by the fire together, and she told me in whispers how she had dreamed of a delicate, pale lady without hands who came and stood beside her and pleaded for a little heat from the heart. "I've been dead for four hundred years," she said; "I can't make a fire because my hands have been cut off," Hittie was not afraid of this dream. She was glad to build up the fire, but as the poor, transparent lady bent towards her she smelled a fragrance like lilacs.'

'Was it the season for lilacs?'

'Oh, no. Months away. When she woke up she could still smell the lilacs, and this did bother her a little, and next she saw, quite suddenly out of nothing, the handless lady. But even this did not frighten her very much. It was all too distinct and real to be terrifying. The oddest thing about it was the fact that I, too, could smell lilacs. I did, even after her death.'

Lanice saw his delicate nostrils taste the air.

'This ghost of the Maremma has been seen by almost every one who has tried to look it up. We have records of it as far back as the diary of a lieutenant of Napoleon's, but no one before has ever seen her arms. I've traced out the history of this castello and its great family at the Biblioteca Laurenziana. There really was a woman, a Contessa Bianca, whose husband found her with her lover. 'That day they read no more.' He had her nailed to the wall with a stiletto through each palm, and set fire to that wing of the