artled
the other day, in crossing the Priory garden, to hear music stealing out
of the apparently deserted house. She had heard the country people say
that the ghost of poor Mrs. Fortescue walks along the terrace in the
twilight, and Marion looked quite scared when she came in, for the music
seemed to come from the drawing-room, where its mistress used to play so
much after she was first married. I almost wonder you can sit alone
there in the dusk, considering the dreadful associations of the place."

"I am used to it now," Mrs. Temperley replied, "and it is so nice and
quiet in the empty house. One knows one can't be interrupted--unless by
ghosts."

"Well, that is certainly a blessing," cried Lady Engleton. "I think I
shall ask Professor Fortescue to allow me also to go to the Priory to
pursue my art in peace and quietness; a truly hyperborean state, beyond
the region of visitors!"

"There would be plenty of room for a dozen unsociable monomaniacs like
ourselves," said Mrs. Temperley.

"I imagine you are a God-send to poor Mrs. Williams, the caretaker,"
said Joseph Fleming. "She is my gamekeeper's sister, and I hear that she
finds the solitude in that vast house almost more than she can stand."

"Poor woman!" said Lady Engleton. "Well, Mr. Fleming, what are the
sporting prospects this autumn?"

He pulled himself together, and his face lighted up. On that subject he
could speak for hours.

Of Joseph Fleming his friends all said: The best fellow in the world. A
kinder heart had no man. He lived on his little property from year's end
to year's end, for the sole and single end of depriving the pheasants
and partridges which he bred upon the estate, of their existence. He was
a confirmed bachelor, living quietly, and taking the world as he found
it (seeing that there was a sufficiency of partridges in good seasons);
trusting that there was a God above who would not let the supply run
short, if one honestly tried to do one's duty and lived an upright life,
harming no man, and women only so much as was strictly honourable and
necessary. He spoke ill of no one. He was diffident of his own powers,
except about sport, wherein he knew himself princely, and cherished that
sort of respect for woman, thoroughly sincere, which assigns to her a
pedestal in a sheltered niche, and offers her homage on condition of her
staying where she is put, even though she starve there, solitary and
esteemed.

"Do tell me, Mr. Fleming, if y