"It is simply this. After the Restoration Roger Boscastle, who had been serving with the Royalists from the beginning of the war, and who had had to fly the country after Naseby, came back to his estates and to his wife, who during her husband's absence had been living with her own family, strict Parliamentarians. Lady Boscastle was a very lovely woman; but a little strict and rigid, and scarcely suited to a rollicking swashbuckler like her husband. One day there arrived at Egremont Priory a troop of horse escorting a beautiful lady and her father, both foreigners, who had done the king much service in time of need, and who had known Roger Boscastle when abroad. Roger seemed very much surprised to see them, and so did Lady Mildred; the latter more especially when first the old nobleman threw his arms round Roger's neck and exclaimed, 'Mon fils!' and then the young lady did ditto and exclaimed, 'Mon amour!' but they were neither of them so astonished as were the old gentleman and the young lady when Roger led Lady Mildred forward and presented her as his wife. They were thoroughly taken aback, and the young lady muttered to Roger under her breath something which Lady Mildred could not catch, but which, by the expression of her eyes, must have been very unpleasant. However, they took up their abode in the castle, whither they had been commended by the king; and they were very polite, especially the lady, to Mildred, who hated her with such hatred as is only felt by a woman who suspects another of carrying on with her husband." "Bravo, Maxse!" interrupted Lord Dollamore; "gad, that's really quite graphic,--that last sentence. You've mistaken your profession, Maxse; you ought to have been an author." "I'm afraid the last sentence was cribbed from the _Guidebook_ to the county. However, to cut my story short, one night Lady Mildred overheard a conversation between her husband and Pepita (that was the foreign lady's name), from which it was pretty clear that Roger had represented himself as a single man when abroad, and had actually married Pepita. Then Mildred had a stormy interview with Roger, and told him of her intention to leave him the next day and go to her brother. But the next morning she was found dead, stabbed to the heart with a dagger, round the handle of which was a scrap of paper, inscribed 'In a Spaniard's way;' and Pepita, her father, and Roger Boscastle were all gone. The latter came back when quite an old man, but was found dead in his bed the morning after his arrival; frightened, it is supposed, by the ghost of Lady Mildred, which in stormy weather duly walks the castle, wringing its hands and waving the bloody dagger in the air." "No, I don't like the last bit," said Lord Dollamore; "too much like Richardson's show. All the rest very good and dramatic; don't you think so, Lady Milford?" "Oh, very good indeed--thoroughly interesting; and, as usual, the only innocent person in the story was punished."