“Who? The landlady’s niece. Oh, she has been at school in London, and is quite a personage--plays this piano in the winter, and reads ‘George Eliot.’” “I don’t like her,” said Mrs. Elles, “and she doesn’t like me.” “Nonsense!” he said, as if he were speaking to a child; “Jane Ann is a very good girl indeed.” “Her head is too big for her body,” Mrs. Elles added, irrelevantly; “and I can’t bear people who are what is called above their station. A little education is a dangerous thing, I think, if it makes people priggish and stunts their growth. I notice she never looks one straight in the face.” “Why should she?” said the painter, unexpectedly, and that rather put an end to the conversation. “I think of going and taking a little walk in the Park, if I can, after dinner,” Mrs. Elles presently remarked, wishing to show that she did not intend to be a nuisance. “I have spent the whole afternoon there, already, and I think it must be most mysterious and wonderful at night.” “Are you not afraid to meet the ghost?” “I should perfectly love to meet it!” cried she, clasping her hands together. “Then, of course, you won’t. ‘The White Lady of Mortham’--I believe here she is called by the less poetical name of the ‘Dobie!’--won’t show unless she is to produce her effect and frighten you.” “I might frighten her,” said Mrs. Elles, still harping on her own grotesque personal metamorphosis, which was ever present to her mind. But he did not take her up and she went on-- “The Park reminds me of the Forest in Undine. Do you remember Küheleborn and the mysterious faces that used to come out of the Forest and peer in at the window of the fisherman’s cottage?” She glanced as she said this at the window of the room they were sitting in, the blind of which was not drawn down, as usual. She could only suppose that it was a fad of his, and that he had given the maid orders to leave it so. She had not been in his company a couple of hours without realizing that he was full of fads. “The black night comes straight against the pane,” she went on dreamily. “All the ghosts in the forest may come and look in on us if they choose! I rather like it, I have a weakness for ghosts. I feel as if the White Lady of Mortham--I prefer to call her the spirit of the Greta--might be looking in on us now!” She gave a little shudder, part real, part affected. “I did see a woman’s face at the window--not now, but last night!” mused the painter with a touch of unexpected seriousness that finished the subjugation of his sentimental listener. “I saw it quite clearly, as I see you now. It was wild and distraught looking, as a spirit’s face should be---- ” “Oh, you believe in ghosts, then? I am so glad.”