He was excited, and scarcely knew what was best to do.
"They say that, like other old houses, Temple Hall has its ghost," he said; "that she usually appears on New Year's night.

If the year is to be good to those within at the time, she comes with flowers and dressed in gay attire; if bad, she is clothed in black; if there's to be death for any one, she wears a shroud.

But it's all nonsense, you know," said Tom, uneasily.
"And she's come in a shroud," said the servant who had been in hysterics, "and there was spots of blood upon it, and that means that the one who dies will be murdered; and there was a knife in her hand, and that means that 'twill be done by a knife." It would be impossible to describe the effect this girl's words made.
She made the ghost very real to many, and the calamity which she was supposed to foretell seemed certain to come to pass.

I looked at Gertrude Forrest and Ethel Gray, who, wrapped in their dressing-gowns, stood side by side, and I saw that both of them were terribly moved.
Voltaire and Kaffar were both there, but they uttered no word.

They, too, seemed to believe in the reality of the apparition.
After a great deal of questioning on the part of the lady guests, and many soothing replies on the part of the men, something like quietness was at length restored, and many of the braver ones began to return to their rooms, until Tom and I were left alone in the servants' hall.