“Why, Odd’s Fish, but you are quite beautiful in an undernourished way,” he murmured, his hands sliding down over her shoulders.

Then he stiffened as he felt the weals on her back through the thin material of her nightgown. “Zooks!” he muttered. “What cruelty has come to my home.

“Get into bed, child. We shall talk tomorrow night. You must sleep all day for I shall not be able to be seen until dark.”

“Where are you going?” whispered Alice.

“To haunt,” he said blithely. “To create the fear of hell in the servants’ hall. A-haunting we will go!”

Alice crept under the covers. She would never sleep again. For what was to become of her? And then it seemed as if she plunged over a high cliff and headlong down and into the deepest sleep she had ever known.

Chapter 2

There’s a lot to be said for toad-eating. See how it can exorcise even the lively ghost of Wadham Hall.

The present Duke, being apprised of the reason for all the rumpus, called all the servants together. In blistering tones, with icy hauteur, he told them in no uncertain terms what he thought of the manifestation of the night before. It was his considered opinion that his staff had been raiding the cellars. His Duchess was no less frosty. Her pale eyes raked the shuffling hangdog servants with contempt. The Groom of the Chambers was given a Severe Warning. Ghosts did not exist except at the bottom of a brandy bottle, when like the proverbial genie, they had been known to emerge along with green snakes and horned devils and the like.

The staff were severely ordered back to their posts with the grim warning that a public whipping and instant dismissal—no matter how high the rank of the servant—would result, should any of them again alarm the ordered calm of the Hall with childish and drunken tales of… pah!… ghosts.

The staff shuffled out. Mr. Bessant promptly decided that some accomplice of that wretched scullery maid had been playing a trick on him, probably one of the family’s by-blows which peopled the countryside. He accordingly took out his humiliation and spite on the next in line, and so it went right down the scale until, if the ghostly Duke had appeared at that moment among them, they would simply have ignored his existence.

Alice awoke to the sound of rain slashing across the windowpanes of the room. She had slept late and was very hungry. Had Alice had a less arduous life, she would have been consumed with superstitious fear. But she had recently decided that if there was a heaven, then it had forgotten her and, if hell existed, it must be like the kitchens of the Hall and therefore an evil not to be feared since she was already well acquainted with it.