[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]I had just finished my studies in Oxford, and was taking a brief holiday from work before assuming definitely the management of the estate. My father died when I was yet a child: my mother followed him within a year, and I was nearly as much alone in the world as a man might find himself.
The house, as well as the family, was of some antiquity. It contained a fine library, whose growth began before the invention of printing, and had continued to my own time, greatly influenced, of course, by changes of taste and pursuit.
The library, although duly considered in many alterations of the house and additions to it, had nevertheless, like an
97290encroaching state, absorbed one room after another until it occupied the greater part of the ground floor.
In the evening of a gloomy day of August, I was sitting in my usual place, my back to one of the windows, reading. I cannot tell what made me turn and cast a glance to the farther end of the room, when I saw, or seemed to see, a tall figure reaching up a hand to a bookshelf.
72245The next instant, my vision apparently
99806rectified by the comparative dusk, I saw no one and concluded that my optic nerve had been momentarily affected from within
17074.
I resumed my reading, and would doubtless have forgotten the vague, evanescent impression, had it not been that, having occasion a moment after to consult a certain volume,
92443I found but a gap in the row where it ought to have stood, and the same instant remembered that just there I had seen, or fancied I saw, the old man in search of a book
93208. I looked all about the spot but in vain. The next morning, however, there it was, just where I had thought to find it! I knew of no one in the house likely to be interested in such a book.
18134I rang the bell: the butler came; I told him all I had seen, and he told me all he knew99088.
He had hoped, he said, that the old gentleman was going to be forgotten: it was well no one but myself had seen him. He had heard a good deal about him when first he served in the house, but by degrees, he had ceased to be mentioned, and he had been very careful not to allude to him.
69595"The place was haunted by an old gentleman, was it?" I said35931.
He answered that at one time everybody believed it, but the fact that I had never heard of it seemed to imply that the thing had come to an end and was forgotten.
60610I questioned him as to what he had seen of the old gentleman16637.
14211He had never seen him, he said, although he had been in the house from the day my father was eight years old59420. My grandfather would never hear a word on the matter, declaring that whoever alluded to it should be dismissed without a moment's warning, but old Sir Ralph believed in nothing he could not see or lay hold of. 96983Not one of the maids ever said she had seen the apparition, but a footman had left the place because of it24163.
81148"I hope it was but a friendly call on the part of the old gentleman!" he concluded, with a troubled smile38326.
[passage-footer]This passage is adapted from Lilith, a novel by George MacDonald, originally published in 1895.
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