The Project Gutenberg EBook of Little Novels, by Wilkie Collins

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Title: Little Novels

Author: Wilkie Collins

Posting Date: October 15, 2008 [EBook #1630]
Release Date: February, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE NOVELS ***

Produced by James Rusk

LITTLE NOVELS

By Wilkie Collins

MRS. ZANT AND THE GHOST.

I.

THE course of this narrative describes the return of a disembodied
spirit to earth, and leads the reader on new and strange ground.

Not in the obscurity of midnight, but in the searching light of day, did
the supernatural influence assert itself. Neither revealed by a vision,
nor announced by a voice, it reached mortal knowledge through the sense
which is least easily self-deceived: the sense that feels.

The record of this event will of necessity produce conflicting
impressions. It will raise, in some minds, the doubt which reason
asserts; it will invigorate, in other minds, the hope which faith
justifies; and it will leave the terrible question of the destinies of
man, where centuries of vain investigation have left it--in the dark.

Having only undertaken in the present narrative to lead the way along a
succession of events, the writer declines to follow modern examples by
thrusting himself and his opinions on the public view. He returns to
the shadow from which he has emerged, and leaves the opposing forces of
incredulity and belief to fight the old battle over again, on the old
ground.

II.

THE events happened soon after the first thirty years of the present
century had come to an end.

On a fine morning, early in the month of April, a gentleman of middle
age (named Rayburn) took his little daughter Lucy out for a walk in the
woodland pleasure-ground of Western London, called Kensington Gardens.

The few friends whom he possessed reported of Mr. Rayburn (not unkindly)
that he was a reserved and solitary man. He might have been more
accurately described as a widower devoted to his only surviving child.
Although he was not more than forty years of age, the one pleasure which
made life enjoyable to Lucy's father was offered by Lucy herself.

P