One of my literary friends, who has looked at the Dead Man's Plack in manuscript, has said by way of criticism that Elfrida's character is veiled. I am not to blame for that; for have I not already said, by implication at all events, in the Preamble, that my knowledge of her comes from outside. Something, or, more likely, Somebody, gave me her history, and it has occurred to me that this same Somebody was no such obscurity as, let us say, the Monk John of Glastonbury, who told the excavators just where to look for the buried chapel of Edgar, king and saint. I suspect that my informant was some one who knew more about Elfrida than any mere looker-on, monk or nun, and gossip-gatherer of her own distant day; and this suspicion or surmise was suggested by the following incident:

After haunting Dead Man's Plack, where I had my vision, I rambled in and about Wherwell on account of its association, and in one of the cottages in the village I became acquainted with an elderly widow, a woman in feeble health, but singularly attractive in her person and manner. Indeed, before making her acquaintance I had been informed by some of her relations and others in the place that she was not only the best person to seek information from, but was also the sweetest person in the village. She was a native born; her family had lived there for generations, and she was of that best South Hampshire type with an oval face, olive-brown skin, black eyes and hair, and that soft melancholy expression in the eyes common in Spanish women and not uncommon in the dark-skinned Hampshire women. She had been taught at the village school, and having attracted the attention and interest of the great lady of the place on account of her intelligence and pleasing manners, she was taken when quite young as lady's-maid, and in this employment continued for many years until her marriage to a villager.

One day, conversing with her, I said I had heard that the village was haunted by the ghost of a woman: was that true?

Yes, it was true, she returned.

Did she know that it was true? Had she actually seen the ghost?

Yes, she had seen it once. One day, when she was lady's-maid, she was in her bedroom, dressing or doing something, with another maid. The door was closed, and they were in a merry mood, talking and laughing, when suddenly they both at the same moment saw a woman with a still, white face walking through the room. She was in the middle of the room when they caught sight of her, and they both screamed and covered their faces with their hands. So great was her terror that she almost fainted; then in a few moments when they looked the apparition had vanished. As to the habit she was wearing, neither of them could say afterwards what it was like: only the white, still face remained fixed in their memory, but the figure was a dark one, like a dark shadow moving rapidly through the room.

If Elfrida then, albeit still in purgatory, is able to re-visit this scene of her early life and the site of that tragedy in the forest, it does not seem to me altogether improbable that she herself made the revelation I have written. And if this be so, it would account for the veiled character conveyed in the narrative. For even after ten centuries it may well be that all the coverings have not yet been removed, that although she has been dropping them one by one for ages, she has not yet come to the end of them. Until the very last covering, or veil, or mist is removed, it would be impossible for her to be absolutely sincere, to reveal her inmost soul with all that is most dreadful in it. But when that time comes, from the very moment of its coming she would cease automatically to be an exiled and tormented spirit.

If, then, Elfrida is herself responsible for the narrative, it is only natural that she does not appear in it quite as black as she has been painted. For the monkish chronicler was, we know, the Father of Lies, and so indeed in a measure are all historians and biographers, since they cannot see into hearts and motives or know all the circumstances of the case. And in this case they were painting the picture of their hated enemy and no doubt were not sparing in the use of the black pigment.

To know all is to forgive all, is a good saying, and enables us to see why even the worst among us can always find it possible to forgive himself.