The Canterville Ghost

I am bound to acknowledge that it was with a good deal of difficulty that he brought himself to adopt this last mode of protection. However, one night, while the family were at dinner, he slipped into Mr. Otis's bedroom and carried off the bottle. He felt a little humiliated at first, but afterwards he was sensible enough to see that there was a great deal to be said for the invention, and, to a certain degree, it served his purpose.

Still, in spite of everything, he was not left unmolested. Strings were continually being stretched across the corridor, over which he tripped in the dark, and on one occasion, he met with a severe fall, through treading on a butter-slide, which the twins had constructed from the entrance of the Tapestry Chamber to the top of the oak staircase. This last insult so enraged him that he resolved to make one final effort to assert his dignity and social position, and determined to visit the insolent young Americans the next night in his celebrated disguise as Reckless Rupert, or the Headless Earl.

He had not appeared in this disguise for more than seventy years: in fact, not since he had so frightened pretty Lady Barbara Modish that she suddenly broke off her engagement with the present Lord Canterville's grandfather, and ran away to Gretna Green with handsome Jack Castletown, declaring that nothing in the world would induce her to marry into a family that allowed such a horrible phantom to walk up and down the terrace at twilight. Poor Jack was afterwards shot in a duel by Lord Canterville on Wandsworth Common, and Lady Barbara died of a broken heart at Tunbridge Wells before the year was out, so, in every way, it had been a great success.

Vocabulary:

Mode: Method.
Humiliated: Embarrassed at being made to look foolish.
Unmolested: Left undisturbed.
Tapestry Chamber: A room with a large picture made from woven cloth.
Earl: A high rank in the British aristocracy.
Induce: Cause to happen.
Terrace: An area of stone just in front of the lawn.
Twilight: Between night and day.
Duel: A very polite fight in which people can get killed.