Fatout,
attending as usual, appeared with a countenance of great dismay, and
informed his master that he had just ascertained that the abbey was
haunted. Mrs Hilary's _gentlewoman_, for whom Fatout had lately
conceived a _tendresse_, had been, as she expressed it, 'fritted out
of her seventeen senses' the preceding night, as she was retiring to
her bedchamber, by a ghastly figure which she had met stalking along
one of the galleries, wrapped in a white shroud, with a bloody turban
on its head. She had fainted away with fear; and, when she
recovered, she found herself in the dark, and the figure was gone.
'_Sacre--cochon--bleu_!' exclaimed Fatout, giving very deliberate
emphasis to every portion of his terrible oath--'I vould not meet de
_revenant_, de ghost--_non_--not for all de _bowl-de-ponch_ in de
vorld.'
'Fatout,' said the Honourable Mr Listless, 'did I ever see a ghost?'
'_Jamais_, monsieur, never.'
'Then I hope I never shall, for, in the present shattered state of my
nerves, I am afraid it would be too much for me. There--loosen the
lace of my stays a little, for really this plebeian practice of
eating--Not too loose--consider my shape. That will do. And I desire
that you bring me no more stories of ghosts; for, though I do not
believe in such things, yet, when one is awake in the night, one is
apt, if one thinks of them, to have fancies that give one a kind of a
chill, particularly if one opens one's eyes suddenly on one's dressing
gown, hanging in the moonlight, between the bed and the window.
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