lace 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 would have ended flippantly, but
for the grave set of her features.

"I wonder who _will_ live here?" she said. "The owner is just dead. They
say it is an awful house, full of ghosts. Of course one is not afraid
now"--the sunlight lay golden and soft on the dusty parquet of the
floor--"but at night, when the wind wails, and the doors creak, and the
things rustle, oh, it must be awful!"

"I hear the house has been left to two people, or rather one is to have
the house, and the other a sum of money," said I. "It's a beautiful
house, full of beautiful things, but I should think at least one of the
heirs would rather have the money."

"Oh yes, I should think so. I wonder whether the heirs know about the
ghost? The lights can be seen from the inn, you know, at twelve o'clock,
and they see the ghost in white at the window."

"Never the black one?"

"Oh yes, I suppose so."

"The ghosts don't appear together?"

"No."

"I suppose," said I, "whoever it is that manages such things knows that
the poor ghosts would like to be together, so it won't let them."

She shivered.

"Come," she said, "we have seen all over the house; let us get back into
the sunshine. Now I will go out, and you shall bolt the door after me,
and then you can come out by the window. Thank you so much for all the
trouble you have taken. It has really been quite an adventure...."

I rather liked that expression, and she hastened to spoil it.

"... Quite an adventure going all over this glorious old place, and
looking at everything one wanted to see, and not just at what the
housekeeper didn't mind one's looking at."

She passed through the door, but when I had closed it and prepared to
lock it, I found that the key was no longer in the lock. I looked on the
floor--I felt in my pockets, and at last, wandering back into the
kitchen, discovered it on the table, where I swear I never put it.

When I had fitted that key into the lock and turned it, and got out of
the window and made that fast, I dropped into the yard. No one shared
its solitude with me. I searched garden and pleasure grounds, but never
a glimpse of pink rewarded my anxious eyes. I found the sundial again,
and stretched myself along the warm brick of the wide step wh