But on
week-days he maintained a prodigious silence, and this (as, though
fierce-looking, he wasn't in the least really fierce) it would often be
John's malicious study to tempt him to break. Besides, to-day, John was
honestly concerned with the pursuit of knowledge.

Accordingly, grace being said, "You never told me," he began, assuming a
mien of intelligent interest, "that the castle was haunted." He looked
at the Napoleonic profile of Don Ambrogio, but from the tail of his eye
he kept a watch as well upon Annunziata, and he saw that that wise
little maiden became attentive.

"No," said Don Ambrogio, between two spoonfuls of soup.

"You will conceive my astonishment, then," continued John, urbanely,
"when I discovered that it was."

"It isn't," said Don Ambrogio. He gave himself diligently to the
business of the hour; his spoon flew backwards and forwards like a
shuttle. His napkin, tucked into his Roman collar, protected his bosom,
an effective white cuirass.

"Oh? Not the castle?" questioned John. "Only the garden? And the olive
wood? True, on reflection, I've never seen it in the house."

"Nothing here is haunted," said the parroco. He made a signal to
Annunziata, who rose to change the plates. Her big eyes were alight, her
serious little face was alert; but she would never dream of speaking in
the presence of her uncle. Marcella, the cook, brought in the inevitable
veal.

"Oh, for that," insisted John, courteous but firm, "I beg your pardon. I
myself have seen it on two occasions; and, lest you should fancy it a
subjective illusion, I may tell you that it was yesterday seen
simultaneously by another."

"It? It? What is _it_?" asked the parroco, his beaked and ensanguined
visage fiercer-looking than ever, as he fell upon the inevitable veal
with a somewhat dull carving-knife.

"Ah," said John, "now you make me regret that I haven't a talent for
word-painting. It's the form of a woman, a young woman, tall, slender,
in some pale diaphanous garment, that appears here, appears there,
remaining distinctly visible for some minutes, and then disappears. No,
it isn't a subjective illusion. And it isn't, either," the unscrupulous
creature added, after a pause, raising his voice, and speaking with
emphasis, as if to repel the insinuation, while the darkness of
disenchantment swept the face of Annunziata, "it isn't, either, as some
imaginative people might too hastily conclude, a wraith, a phantom, an
insubstantia