"
"Does Nevill see or hear?" asked Stephen.
"As much as Aunt Caroline does, if the truth were known," answered her
nephew. "Only she couldn't be happy unless she had a grievance. Here she
wanted to choose an original and suitable one, so she hit upon
ghosts--the ghosts of slaves murdered by a cruel master."
"Hit upon them, indeed!" she echoed indignantly, making her knitting
needles click, a movement which displayed her pretty, miniature hands,
half hidden in lace ruffles. "As if they hadn't gone through enough, in
flesh and blood, poor creatures! Some of them may have been my
countrymen, captured on the seas by those horrid pirates."
"Who was the cruel master?" Stephen wanted to know, still smiling,
because it was almost impossible not to smile at Lady MacGregor.
"Not my brother James, I'm glad to say," she quickly replied. "It was
about three hundred years before his time. And though he had some quite
irritating tricks as a young man, murdering slaves wasn't one of them.
To be sure, they tell strange tales of him here, as I make no doubt
Nevill has already mentioned, because he's immoral enough to be proud of
what he calls the romance. I mean the story of the beautiful Arab lady,
whom James is supposed to have stolen from her rightful husband--that
is, if an Arab can be rightful--and hidden in this house far many a
year, till at last she died, after the search for her had long, long
gone by.
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