’I don’t think I shall ever see a ghost; but all the same I should be half afraid to be here alone in the dark.’

’I am often here alone in the dark, but I am beginning to think I shall never see a ghost now.  I am losing all my romance, and getting to be an old woman.  Do you know, Grace, I do so hate myself for being such an old maid.’

‘But who says you’re an old maid, Lily?’

’I see it in people’s eyes, and hear it in their voices.  And they all talk to me as if I were steady, and altogether removed from anything like fun and frolic.  It seems to be admitted that if a girl does not want to fall in love, she ought not to care for any other fun in the world.  If anybody made out a list of the old ladies in these parts, they’d put down Lady Julia, and mamma, and Mrs Boyce, and me, and old Mrs Hearne.  The very children have an awful respect for me, and give over playing directly they see me.  Well, mamma, we’ve done at last, and I have had such a scolding from Mrs Boyce.’

‘I daresay you deserved it, my dear.’

‘No, I did not, mamma.  Ask Grace if I did.’

‘Was she not saucy to Mrs Boyce, Miss Crawley?’

‘She said Mr Boyce scratches his nose in church,’ said Grace.

‘So he does; and goes to sleep, too.’

’If you told Mrs Boyce that, Lily, I think she was quite right to scold you.’

Such was Miss Lily Dale, with whom Grace Crawley was staying;—­Lily Dale with whom Mr John Eames, of the Income-tax Office, had been so long and so steadily in love, that he was regarded among his fellow-clerks as a miracle of constancy—­who had, herself, in former days been so unfortunate in love as to have been regarded among her friends in the country as the most ill-used of women.  As John Eames had been able to be comfortable in life—­that is to say, not utterly a wretch—­in spite of his love, so had she managed to hold up her head, and live as other young women live, in spite of her fortune.  But as it may be said also that his constancy was true constancy, although he knew how to enjoy the good things of the world, so also had her misfortune been a true misfortune, although she had been able to bear it without much outer show of shipwreck.  For a few days—­for a week or two, when the blow first struck her, she had been knocked down, and the friends who were nearest to her had thought that she would never again stand erect upon her feet.  But she had been very strong, stout at heart, of a fixed purpose, and capable of resistance against oppression.  Even her own mother had been astonished, and sometimes almost dismayed, by the strength of her will.  Her mother knew well how it was with her now; but they who saw her frequently, and who did not know her as her mother knew her—­the Mrs Boyce’s of her acquaintance—­whispered among themselves that Lily Dale was not so soft of heart as people used to think.