"Yes," was the reply; "it has the look of a house which could boast of such a luxury. Don't you think so, Mr. Westgate?"
This is a newcomer who had just been introduced.
"Well," observed the latter, "as I have seen only this room, and as this room is anything but ghostlike at the present moment, I hardly consider myself competent to judge."
"But the exterior! Surely you noticed the exterior. Such a rambling old structure; such a beetling top to it, as if it had settled down here to brood over a mysterious past. I never see it, especially at twilight, that I don't wonder what lies so heavily upon its conscience. Is it a crime? There would be nothing strange about it if it was. Such old houses rarely have a clean past."
It was nonchalantly said, but it sank deep into my heart. Not that I felt that he had any motive in saying it—I knew the young scapegrace too well—but that I was conscious from his first word of two eyes burning on my face, which robbed me of all self-possession, though I think I sat without movement, and only paled the slightest in the world.
"A house that dates back to a time when the white men and the red fought every inch of the territory on which it stands would be an anomaly if it did not have some drops of blood upon it," I ventured to say, as soon as I could command my emotions.
"True," broke in a low, slow voice—that of Madame Letellier. "Do you know of any especial tragedy that makes the house memorable?"
I turned and gave her a look before replying. She was seated in the shadows of a remote corner, and had so withdrawn herself behind her daughter that I could see nothing of her face. But her hands were visible, and from the force with which she held them clasped in her lap I perceived that the subject we were discussing possessed a greater interest for her than for any one else in the room. "She has heard something of the tragedy connected with this house," was my inward comment, as I prepared to answer her.
"There is one," I began, and paused. Something of the instinct of the cat with the mouse had entered into me. I felt like playing with her suspense, cruel as it may seem.
"Oh, tell us!" broke in the daughter, a sudden flush of interest suffusing for a moment her white cheek. "That is, if it is not too horrible. I never like horrible stories; they frighten me. And as for a ghost—if I thought you kept such a creature about your house, I should leave it at once."