I almost bounded, so unexpected was the sound; so certain had I been of solitude.
No ghost stood beside me, nor anything of spectral aspect; merely a motherly, dumpy little woman, in a large shawl, a wrapping-gown, and a clean, trim nightcap.
I said I was English, and immediately, without further prelude, we fell to a most remarkable conversation.

Madame Beck (for Madame Beck it was--she had entered by a little door behind me, and, being shod with the shoes of silence, I had heard neither her entrance nor approach)--Madame Beck had exhausted her command of insular speech when she said, "You ayre Engliss," and she now proceeded to work away volubly in her own tongue.

I answered in mine.

She partly understood me, but as I did not at all understand her--though we made together an awful clamour (anything like Madame's gift of utterance I had not hitherto heard or imagined)--we achieved little progress.

She rang, ere long, for aid; which arrived in the shape of a "maitresse," who had been partly educated in an Irish convent, and was esteemed a perfect adept in the English language.