The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories

In those days a young girl of decent breeding could make no advances whatever, and barely respond, indeed, to those that were made. She was expected to sit still in her chair with her eyes on the carpet, watching the spot where the mystic handkerchief should fall.

It very soon came to be predicted that he would marry again, and there were at least a dozen young women of whom one may say that it was by no fault of theirs that, for six months after his return, the prediction did not come true.

He stood pouting his great lips in some old Roman’s garden two thousand years ago. He saw the sandalled feet treading the alleys and the rose-crowned heads bending over the wine; he knew the old feasts and the old worship, the old Romans and the old gods. As I sit here he speaks to me, in his own dumb way, and describes it all!

Viola imposed upon her lover but a short probation. They were married, as was becoming, with great privacy, – almost with secrecy, – in the hope perhaps, as was waggishly remarked at the time, that the late Mrs Lloyd wouldn’t hear of it.

Then the master went, and Quint was alone.’ I followed, but halting a little. ‘Alone?’ ‘Alone with us.’ Then as from a deeper depth, ‘In charge,’ she added. ‘And what became of him?’ She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified. ‘He went too,’ she brought out at last.

I remember the time and the place – the corner of the lawn, the shade of the great beeches and the long hot summer afternoon.

They were good sisterly friends, betwixt whom it would take more than a day for the seeds of jealousy to sprout and bear fruit; but the young girls felt that the seeds had been sown on the day that Mr Lloyd came into the house. Each made up her mind that, if she should be slighted, she would bear her grief in silence, and that no one should be any

There have been things seen and done here which leave strange influences behind! They don’t touch you, doubtless, who come of another race. But they touch me, often, in the whisper of the leaves and the odour of the mouldy soil and the blank eyes of the old statues. I can’t bear to look the statues in the face. I seem to see other strange eyes in t

He had a sort of sunken depth of expression, and a grave, slow smile, suggesting no great quickness of wit, but an unimpassioned intensity of feeling which promised well for Martha’s happiness. He had little of the light, inexpensive urbanity of his countrymen, and more of a sort of heavy sincerity in his gaze which seemed to suspend response until