out of respect to the feelings of the two noble families,
every attempt was made to hush it up, and a full account
of all the circumstances connected with it will be
found in the third volume of Lord Tattle’s Recollections
of the Prince Regent and his Friends. The
ghost, then, was naturally very anxious to show that
he had not lost his influence over the Stiltons, with
whom, indeed, he was distantly connected, his own
first cousin having been married en secondes noces
to the Sieur de Bulkeley, from whom, as every one
knows, the Dukes of Cheshire are lineally descended.
Accordingly, he made arrangements for appearing to
Virginia’s little lover in his celebrated impersonation
of “The Vampire Monk, or the Bloodless Benedictine,”
a performance so horrible that when old Lady Startup
saw it, which she did on one fatal New Year’s
Eve, in the year 1764, she went off into the most
piercing shrieks, which culminated in violent apoplexy,
and died in three days, after disinheriting the Cantervilles,
who were her nearest relations, and leaving all her
money to her London apothecary. At the last moment,
however, his terror of the twins prevented his leaving
his room, and the little Duke slept in peace under
the great feathered canopy in the Royal Bedchamber,
and dreamed of Virginia.
V
A few days after this, Virginia and her curly-haired
cavalier went out riding on Brockley meadows, where
she tore her habit so badly in getting through a hedge
that, on their return home, she made up her mind to
go up by the back staircase so as not to be seen.
As she was running past the Tapestry Chamber, the
door of which happened to be open, she fancied she
saw some one inside, and thinking it was her mother’s
maid, who sometimes used to bring her work there,
looked in to ask her to mend her habit. To her
immense surprise, however, it was the Canterville
Ghost himself! He was sitting by the window, watching
the ruined gold of the yellowing trees fly through
the air, and the red leaves dancing madly down the
long avenue. His head was leaning on his hand,
and his whole attitude was one of extreme depression.
Indeed, so forlorn, and so much out of repair did
he look, that little Virginia, whose first idea had
been to run away and lock herself in her room, was
filled with pity, and determined to try and comfort
him. So light was her footfall, and so deep his
melancholy, that he was not aware of her presence till
she spoke to him.
“I am so sorry for you,” she said, “but
my brothers are going back to Eton to-morrow, and
then, if you behave yourself, no one will annoy you.”
“It is absurd asking me to behave myself,”
he answered, looking round in astonishment at the
pretty little girl who had ventured to address him,
“quite absurd. I must rattle my chains,
and groan through keyholes, and walk about at night,
if that is what you mean. It is my only reason
for existing.”
