The Spectre

It was about to speak
And then it started like a guilty thing.
Upon a fearful summons.--SHAKESPEARE.

"Philip Dubarry remained walking up and down the door, foaming with
impotent rage, as well as trembling with a vague and awful terror. He
had a practical and scientific mind, and could understand everything
that might be governed by known laws. But he could not understand this
unwelcome visitant, that had appeared to every one else in the house but
himself. He was an arbitrary and despotic man who enforced his will upon
all connected with him, and ruled all flesh with a rod of iron. But he
could not rule the spirit, and he knew it. He could not lay this ghost
of his guilt.

"There was one grain of truth in the ton of falsehood that he had told
to his unconscious wife, to account for the apparition seen by her.
There really was a Milly Jones, the daughter of a poor family on the
mountains, and she really did come occasionally to the house to ask for
broken victuals and old clothes; but instead of being a beautiful
black-eyed and black-haired little gipsy, in the picturesque red cloak,
she was a pale-faced, light-haired, poor-spirited looking creature, in a
faded calico frock, and an old plaid shawl; and instead of being the
family pet, with the run of the house, she was the family nuisance,
strictly prohibited from passing the bounds of the servants' hall.

"So when that day, being a rainy day, and therefore highly favorable for
attention to domestic matters, Mistress Alicia Dubarry called the
house-steward to her presence, and ordered him to send a small pension
of two dollars a week to the Jones family, with an intimation that Miss
Milly need not come to collect it, the order was promptly executed, to
the satisfaction of all the domestics; and poor Milly, glad to be
relieved from her fatiguing journey and degrading mendicity, was seen no
more at Shut-up Dubarry.