"I don't believe the master has returned." "Why should the tower windows, where the master always lived, be opened then?
Something unusual has happened," said Mrs.Apollonie significantly.
"The ghost of Wildenstein might have pushed them open," Kurt quickly asserted.
"Kurt, can't you stop talking about this story?
It is only an invention of people who are not contented with one misfortune but must make up an added terror," the mother said with animation.

"You know, Kurt, that I feel sorry about this foolish tale and want you to pay no attention to it." "But mother, I only want to support you; I want to help you get rid of people's superstitions and to prove to them that there is no ghost in Wildenstein," Kurt assured her.
"Yes, yes, if only one did not know how the brothers--" "No, Apollonie," the rector's widow interrupted her, "you least of all should support the belief in these apparitions.

Everybody knows that you lived in the castle more than twenty years, and so people think that you know what is going on.

You realize well enough that all the talk has no foundation whatever." Mrs.Apollonie lightly shrugged her shoulders, but said no more.
"But, mother, what can the talk come from then, when there is no foundation for it, as you say ?" asked Kurt, who could not let the matter rest.
"There is no real foundation for the talk," the mother replied, "and no one of all those who talk has ever seen the apparition with his own eyes.
It is always other people who tell, and those have been told again by others, that something uncanny has been seen at the castle.

The talk first started from a misfortune which happened years ago, and later on the matter came up and people thought a similar misfortune had taken place again.