Gloria Victis! by Ossip Schubin

The world of spirits is a favourite topic with your aristocratic dilettanti, and every Austrian family _qui se respecte_ has its spectre.

The Zinsenburgs have their White Lady, the Truyns their magnificent four-in-hand, which, as the fore-runner of any terrible domestic calamity, rattles past the windows of the Truynburg in the Bohemian forest -- no one knows whither or whence. -- The Kamenz family have only a black hand that inscribes weird characters of fire on the walls; the Lodrins have their blind woman who is heard laughing when disgrace or misfortune threatens the family. Of all the family spectres in Bohemia this laughing, blind woman is the most grisly. Her origin dates from dim antiquity. The legend runs that in the eleventh or twelfth century a knight, Wolf von Lodrin, married in accordance with a family arrangement, but with no love on the bride's part, a beautiful and noble maiden.