At the beginning of Chapter Five, Virginia returns from riding with the Duke of Cheshire on Brockley Meadow when she tears her dress. As she enters the house through the back door (so as not to be seen by her mother), she sees the Canterville ghost looking very depressed in the Tapestry Chamber.
Virginia feels sorry for the ghost so she starts a conversation with him in which she reminds him that her brothers will...
At the beginning of Chapter Five, Virginia returns from riding with the Duke of Cheshire on Brockley Meadow when she tears her dress. As she enters the house through the back door (so as not to be seen by her mother), she sees the Canterville ghost looking very depressed in the Tapestry Chamber.
Virginia feels sorry for the ghost so she starts a conversation with him in which she reminds him that her brothers will soon return to school and everything will get better, as long as he behaves himself. The ghost replies by saying that he cannot behave himself because frightening people is his reason for existing.
As the pair converse, Virginia learns that the ghost murdered his own wife and, in retaliation, was starved to death by her brothers. Virginia is horrified by this revelation but her attitude changes when he tells her that he is tired because he has not slept for three hundred years. He wishes to rest eternally in the Garden of Death but cannot go there without her help, as the ghost explains:
"You must weep with me for my sins, because I have no tears, and pray with me for my soul, because I have no faith, and then, if you have always been sweet, and good, and gentle, the angel of death will have mercy on me."
Virginia is the only person in the Otis family who can help the ghost because she is a "golden girl" who can bring about his atonement. This is according to the prophecy which is written on the library window.
The chapter finishes as the ghost and Virginia pass through an opening in the wall and head towards the Garden of Death.
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