The Canterville Ghost

While out riding, Virginia gets her clothes caught and they rip a little, so she decides she will sneak into the back of the house. There, she thinks she has found one of the maids but instead comes upon Sir Simon. He is sad and watching the leaves fall outside. She approaches him and they talk, first about his wife. She tells him that it’s wrong to kill, and he replies by stating the ways in which his wife did not rise to the expectations of her duties.

Then, she challenges Sir Simon about stealing her paints in order to revive the blood stain in the library. She chides him for leaving her with nothing but indigo and white, which forces her to paint only moonlit scenes. “As for colour,” Sir Simon says, “that is always a matter of taste: the Cantervilles have blue blood, for instance, the very bluest in England; but I know you Americans don’t care for things of this kind” (24).

Virginia suggests that he emigrate to America, where she promises he will be successful, and find a reason for existing beyond rattling his chains and lurking in corridors late at night to scare people.