When he met Georgiana the next evening, he expected some allusion by her to the incident, as he supposed the maid servant must have spread the tale through the household. But Georgiana said nothing of the matter. She had indeed heard nothing of it, for the isolation in which she dwelt in the house was copied by her maid, partly in imitation and partly because, with her Southern ideas of propriety, Prudence found herself as much antagonized by the rude Northern servants of the house as by the affected London attendants of the visitors. Thus she spent as much of her time as possible in her mistress’s apartments, big with the secret entrusted to her of the clandestine meetings. Being thus on sniffing terms with her equals in the servants’ hall, and out of their gossip, she remained in ignorance of the kitchen-maid’s adventure. From Georgiana’s silence on the subject, Everell inferred that the occurrence had created no talk in the house; and he did not mention it himself, lest Georgiana, in her scruples as to his safety and her own conduct, might lessen the frequency of their meetings. His periods of longing were sufficiently endless, his tastes of joy sufficiently brief, as they were.
But the kitchen-maid’s adventure had not really gone without circulation. “You never told us your house was haunted, Foxwell,” said Lady Strange, meeting her host at the breakfast-table, from which Georgiana had already gone. Mrs. Winter and Rashleigh were yet to appear.
“I never knew it—till this moment, at least,” replied Foxwell, stifling a yawn which owed itself, perhaps, to the punch or primero of the previous night. “Though every crumbling old brick-heap like this has its ghost or so, no doubt. But what do you mean?”
“My waiting-woman has been telling me of a strange figure that appeared to your scullery-maid the other night. In the sunken garden, I believe it was: a man in a cloak, wearing a sword.”
“It must have been a ghost, indeed,” said Foxwell, smiling. “There is certainly no such living man whose appearance in that garden is probable—unless Rashleigh has taken to mooning outdoors after bedtime.”
“Not I,” said Rashleigh, who had just entered. “What are you talking of?”
“My lady has discovered, through the servants, that a ghost walks in the sunken garden—a man in a cloak, with a sword at his side. I say it must be a ghost indeed, and yet there is this difficulty: suppose there _are_ ghosts of human beings, what of the clothes they appear in? What of this ghost’s cloak and sword?—are they real cloak and sword, or are they the ghosts of cloak and sword?—and do inanimate things have ghosts?”