“ ‘I’m not saying I believe one word of what you said,’ Jasmine fired back. ‘I’m just saying I saw Goblin. That’s all I have to say.’

“ ‘You know who that Rebecca was, don’t you?’ I asked, glancing around at everyone. Nobody said a word.

“ ‘I’m going to have the priest out here,’ said Pops in the same lifeless fashion in which he’d said everything else. ‘I’m going to get Fr. Mayfair here. This is just too many ghosts, and I don’t care if one of them was Virginia Lee.’

“ ‘And you, you idiot boy,’ said Big Ramona, ‘stop glorying in the fact that everybody believes you and get it straight in your head that you nearly burned down this house.’

“ ‘That’s the damned truth,’ said Jasmine. ‘I’m not saying I don’t believe you saw this creature, this thing, this woman, but Mamma’s right, you damned near burnt down Blackwood Manor. You set the damned place on fire.’

“ ‘Look, I know that,’ I said defensively. I got real defensive. ‘But who was she? Why’d she want to burn down this house? Did she die out there on the island? That has to be it.’

“Pops raised his hand for silence. ‘Doesn’t matter who she was. If she did die out there, there’s nothing left of her. And you do what I tell you about making the Sign of the Cross.’

“ ‘Don’t you ever be caught up by her again,’ said Lolly.

“And on and on it went for a half hour, them castigating me and excoriating me and everything else in the book.

“When I left the kitchen, I was in a sort of daze. Memories of being with her were coming back to me and I didn’t dare tell the Kitchen Committee. I just wanted out.

“I went into the parlor, maybe to convince myself that it was the parlor I knew and not that strange apparition, and I found myself looking at the portrait of Manfred Blackwood. So distinguished. So much authority in his bulldog face. It is amazing, the varieties of beauty. His huge mournful eyes, his flattened nose, his jutting chin and turned-down mouth all seemed harmonious and silently grand. I found myself talking to him, murmuring to him that he knew who that Rebecca Stanford was, and I would find out.

“ ‘Why didn’t you come to try to stop her?’ I asked him, watching the play of light on the portrait. ‘Why did it have to be Virginia Lee?’