"I can't help it," said the girl, simply. "It always makes me a little frightened, though I know it's silly. Winifred gets quite vexed if it is mentioned. She says it is contemptible nonsense. Louise believes it, but she is so good, it doesn't frighten her. Still, for other reasons, we seldom allude to it. It has come so true, over and over again: I could tell you lots of things. Papa, you know, has had heaps of trouble. Poor papa, just think what a life of endurance his is! So you see if--if Winifred could have married Lennox (he is our second-cousin, you know), it would have done so well--keeping the old name, and she being the owner of the place." "I see," said young Balderson. "Or even if she could have been a more ordinary sort of girl, content to settle down at home," Celia went on, "for--" and here the frightened look came over her face again--"there's more in the legend: the worst luck of all is to come if a woman of the family deserts her post. And once a rather flighty great-grand-aunt of ours _did_--she couldn't live at home, because she thought it was a dull part of the country, and she came up to London, and travelled about to amuse herself, and all _sorts_ of things happened." "Did burglars break in, or was the house burnt down, or--?" began Eric, but Celia interrupted him. "You are laughing at me again," she said reproachfully. "No, it was worse than that. Her son turned out very badly, and was killed in a duel, and her daughter died, and they lost a lot of money, and in the end it came to our grandmother, you see, whose husband took the name Maryon. But the family has never been so well off since." "And in the face of all those warnings, your sister persists--no, what is it she wants to do or not to do?" said the young man, looking rather perplexed. "The ghost can't bully her for not marrying a man she doesn't care for, surely? I thought better of ghosts than that!" "No, it's not that. It is that she wants to leave home and make a career for herself. And I admire her for it. That's why we were so pleased to come here: we want to find out about a lot of things." Eric looked really grave. "Why is your sister not content to stay at home?" he inquired. "Even if she were a man, there are men whose vocation it is not to have a profession, whose work and duties are there, all ready for them. Is it not much the same with Miss Maryon, considering your father's illness, and all there must be to look after?" His hearer seemed surprised and almost startled. There are aspects of our daily life, ways of looking at our surroundings, with which we might long have been familiar--commonplace, matter-of-fact reflections, requiring no special genius of discrimination to call them forth--which, nevertheless when put into words by an outsider, strike us with extraordinary effect. Almost do they come upon us with the force of a revelation.