«
    Mrs. Rouncewell holds this opinion, because she considers that a family of
such antiquity and importance has a right to a ghost. She regards a ghost as one
of the privileges of the upper classes; a genteel distinction to which the
common people have no claim.
    »Sir Morbury Dedlock,« says Mrs. Rouncewell, »was, I have no occasion to
say, on the side of the blessed martyr. But it is supposed that his Lady, who
had none of the family blood in her veins, favoured the bad cause. It is said
that she had relations among King Charles's enemies: that she was in
correspondence with them; and that she gave them information. When any of the
country gentlemen who followed His Majesty's cause met here, it is said that my
Lady was always nearer to the door of their council-room than they supposed. Do
you hear a sound like a footstep passing along the terrace, Watt?«
    Rosa draws nearer to the housekeeper.
    »I hear the rain-drip on the stones,« replies the young man, »and I hear a
curious echo - I suppose an echo - which is very like a halting step.«
    The housekeeper gravely nods and continues:
    »Partly on account of this division between them, and partly on other
accounts, Sir Morbury and his Lady led a troubled life. She was a lady of a
haughty temper. They were not well suited to each other in age or character, and
they had no children to moderate between them. After her favourite brother, a
young gentleman, was killed in the civil wars (by Sir Morbury's near kinsman),
her feeling was so violent that she hated the race into which she had married.
When the Dedlocks were about to ride out from Chesney Wold in the King's cause,
she is supposed to have more than once stolen down into the stables in the dead
of night, and lamed their horses: and the story is, that once, at such an hour,
her husband saw her gliding down the stairs and followed her into the stall
where his own favourite horse stood. There he seized her by the wrist; and in a
struggle or in a fall, or through the horse being frightened and lashing out,
she was lamed in the hip, and from that hour began to pine away.«
    The housekeeper has dropped her voice to a little more than a whisper.
    »She had been a lady of a handsome figure and a noble carriage. She never
complained of the change; she never spoke to any
