sound and a spectre,--me who, thanks to sublime education, went so quietly
to sleep a few minutes after, convinced hat no phantom, the ghostliest
that ear ever heard or eye ever saw, can be anything else but a nervous
phenomenon.




CHAPTER XXII.

That evening I went to Mrs. Poyntz's; it was one of her ordinary
"reception nights," and I felt that she would naturally expect my
attendance as "a proper attention."

I joined a group engaged in general conversation, of which Mrs. Poyntz
herself made the centre, knitting as usual,--rapidly while she talked,
slowly when she listened.

Without mentioning the visit I had paid that morning, I turned the
conversation on the different country places in the neighbourhood, and
then incidentally asked, "What sort of a man is Sir Philip Derval? Is it
not strange that he should suffer so fine a place to fall into decay?"
The answers I received added little to the information I had already
obtained. Mrs. Poyntz knew nothing of Sir Philip Derval, except as a man
of large estates, whose rental had been greatly increased by a rise in the
value of property he possessed in the town of L----, and which lay
contiguous to that of her husband. Two or three of the older inhabitants
of the Hill had remembered Sir Philip in his early days, when he was gay,
high-spirited, hospitable, lavish. One observed that the only person in
L---- whom he had admitted to his subsequent seclusion was Dr. Lloyd, who