It was the custom of the Honourable¹ Mr Listless, on adjourning² from the bottle to the ladies, to retire for a few moments to make a second toilette, that he might present himself in becoming taste. Fatout, attending as usual, appeared with a countenance³ of great dismay, and informed his master that he had just ascertained⁴ 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 shroud⁶, with a bloody⁷ 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-deponch 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 plebeian⁸ 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 dressing⁹ gown, hanging in the moonlight, between the bed and the window.’

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