The Canterville Ghost

He thought of the Dowager Duchess, whom he had frightened into a fit as she stood before the glass in her lace and diamonds; of the four housemaids, who had gone off into hysterics when he merely grinned at them through the curtains of one of the spare bedrooms. Of the rector of the parish, whose candle he had blown out as he was coming late one night from the library, and who had been under the care of Sir William Gull ever since, a perfect martyr to nervous disorders.

Old Madame de Tremouillac, who, having wakened up one morning early and seen a skeleton seated in an armchair by the fire reading her diary, had been confined to her bed for six weeks with an attack of brain fever, and, on her recovery, had become reconciled to the Church, and broken off her connection with that notorious sceptic Monsieur de Voltaire.

He remembered the terrible night when the wicked Lord Canterville was found choking in his dressing-room, with the knave of diamonds half-way down his throat, and confessed, just before he died, that he had cheated Charles James Fox out of £50,000 at Crockford's by means of that very card, and swore that the ghost had made him swallow it.

Vocabulary:

Fit: Here it means a mental collapse.
Glass: Here it means 'mirror'.
Hysterics: To be too upset to think properly.
Merely: Just, only.
Rector: A position in the church.
Parish: The administrative area of a church.
Perfect martyr: Someone who can not suffer more.
Disorder Here it means illness.
Confine: Force to stay in
Reconciled: Stopped argueing and fighting with.
Notorious: Famous for something bad.
Sceptic: Someone who does not really believe anything.
Choke: When you can't breathe because your throat is blocked.
Knave of diamonds: A playing card.
Very: Here it means 'same'.