“There is one thing you have not told me of,” I said, “and that you must possess. I cannot believe that your family has been settled here so long without having a ghost.”
She had turned round to look at me, to know what it was that had been omitted in her descriptions. When she heard what it was she smiled a little, but not with the pleasant mockery I had expected. On the contrary, it was a sort of gentle smile of recognition of something left out.
“We don’t call it a ghost,” she said. “I have wondered if you had never noticed. I am fond of it, for my part; but then I have been used to it all my life. And here we are, then,” she added, as we reached the top of a little ascent and came out upon a raised avenue, which I had known by its name of the Lady’s Walk, without as yet getting any explanation what that meant. It must have been, I supposed, the avenue to the old house, and now encircled one portion of the grounds without any distinct meaning. On the side nearest the gardens and house it was but slightly raised above the shrubberies, but on the other side rose to the summit of a high bank, sloping steeply to the river, which, after it escaped from the loch, made a wide bend round that portion of the grounds. A row of really grand beeches rose on each side of the path, and through the openings in the trees the house, the bright gardens, the silvery gleam of the loch were visible. The evening sun was slanting into our eyes as we walked along; a little soft yet brisk air was pattering among the leaves, and here and there a yellow cluster in the middle of a branch showing the first touch of a cheerful decay. “Here we are, then.” It was a curious phrase; but there are some odd idioms in the Scotch--I mean Scots--form of our common language, and I had become accustomed now to accept them without remark.
“I suppose,” I said, “there must be some back way to the village or to the farmhouse under this bank, though there seems no room for a path?”
“Why do you ask?” she said, looking at me with a smile.
“Because I always hear someone passing along--I imagine down there. The steps are very distinct. Don’t you hear them now? It has puzzled me a good deal, for I cannot make out where the path can be.”