midnight
Its interior was an embodiment in stone and oak and plaster of cosy comfort and dignified repose , and , though it contained every `` modern improvement , '' all was in such perfect taste and harmony that even the electric light might have been installed in the days of the first James . The Professor inhabited the northern wing , reputed to have been the original lodge in which kings and queens and great soldiers and statesmen had held revel after the chase , and tradition had endowed it with a quite authentic ghost : which was that of a fair maiden who had been decoyed thither to become the victim of royal passion , and who , strangely enough , poisoned herself in her despair , instead of getting herself made a duchess and founding the honours of a noble family on her own dishonour . Although , as I have said , quite authentic , for the Professor had seen her so often that he had come to regard her with respectful friendship , the Lady Alicia was not quite an orthodox ghost . She did not come at midnight and wail in distressing fashion over the scene of her sad and shameful death . She seemed to come when and where she listed , whether in the glimpses of the moon or the full sunlight of mid-day . She never passed beyond the limits of the old lodge , and never broke the silence of her coming and goings . None of the present inhabitants of `` The Wilderness '' had seen her save the Professor , but Nitocris had often shivered with a sudden chill when she chanced to be in her invisible presence , and at such times she would often say to her father : `` There is something cold in the room , Dad .