'That's no reason for being here, and you know you have been a very bad person. The first day we arrived here, Mrs Umney told us that you had killed your wife.'
'Well, of course I killed her,' said the Ghost, 'but that should really interest my family and nobody else.'
'It is very wrong to kill anyone,' said Virginia. Sometimes she could be very sweet and as serious as her ancestors in New England had been.
'Oh, it's very easy to be rude about things that don't have anything to do with you! My wife was not very pretty, she never prepared my clothes properly, and she was a terrible cook. I shot a deer in Hogley Woods once, a magnificent deer, and do you know how terrible it looked when it came to the table?'
'However, that is not important now, because it's all in the past. But I don't think it was very nice of her brothers to starve me to death, even if I did kill their sister.'
'Starve you to death? Oh, Mr Ghost, I mean Sir Simon, are you hungry? I have a sandwich in my bag. Would you like to eat it?'
'No, thank you, I never eat anything now; but you are very kind. You are much nicer than the rest of your horrible, rude, noisy, dishonest family.'