The Argosy — page 309: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

2)2 Erna. and the far-off blue of the sea, and wooded peak melting softly into peak, and fading in the haze of the distance as fades a dream. I followed her through the inhabited part of the old house that summer’s morning with little in my mind beyond the thought that she was fair, and that I loved her. We turned presently into a narrow, badly-lighted passage ; and at the sight of ancient doors on either side of me other thoughts came into my mind—thoughts of those who had been this fair creature’s ancestors. In these rooms they had lived and died ; here the spirit of one of them—Geoffrey, the Cavalier Heathcott, who had fought as bravely as foolishly for the Stuart cause—was supposed sometimes to wander restlessly from midnight to cock-crow. I knew nothing more of the legend told of him than that his end had been strange and dreadful, and that his fate was in some way connected with that of his steward, Winstanley, whose name had been given to the room where Erna was now leading me. “You care nothing for my legends, Gerald,” she said, her voice breaking in suddenly on my thoughts. She had stopped before a door of especially uninviting appearance, and now unlocked it. ‘You might say that in any of the rooms below, or even here in the day-time ; but —” beckoning me to enter—‘“ would you dare repeat it at twelve at night, and alone in a room like this P” “Vou don’t think much of my nerves, I see, Erna,” I answered, following her into the haunted room. A strange, gloomy place it was, scantily furnished in the fashion of at least a century before, and having in one corner an antique bed, dating back, perhaps, to the time of Anne or George I. I found myself looking at this with an uncomfortable feeling that perhaps the ghostly steward, after his nightly walks through the old house, might lie down in it sometimes in preference to his grave. ‘“ Erna,” I asked of the girl beside me, ‘‘do you say that mortals have quite given up occupying this room P” ‘My grandfather once or twice slept here, or so I have heard,” she answered. ‘‘He must have been a brave man—worthy of the Cavalier race he came from.” ‘Ts the ghost so terrible a ghost, then, to encounter ?” ‘Terrible to a Heathcott,” she said, seriously. ‘I know you will laugh at me, Gerald, and perhaps the fancy is a silly one, but I never come here without feeling that every word of the story they tell of the room must be true. Out of it, I am more of a sceptic about my ghosts.” ‘“T’ll hear the story before I laugh at you,” I answered. I was more curious about the legend, standing in this dim old room, than I had been half an hour before, when resting at Erna’s feet with the roses about us and the blue of the sky above, and finding in her eyes a blue between sky and violet, and in her cheek the rose’s faintest, most exquisite blush. COMIC MOO; KS, (E00)