“You did? When?” The glance he shot at me was quick and searching.
I told him and for a long time he sat very still gazing with retrospective eyes into the fire.
“More than that,” I whispered after a while, “I heard a cough. It came from no one in sight. It sounded smothered. It seemed to come from the wall at my left, but that was impossible of course.”
“Impossible, of course. The whole thing is foolishness—not to be thought of for a moment. The harmless result of some defect in carpentry. I smile when people speak of it. So do my servants. I keep them all, you see.”
“Uncle, if this house needed a finishing touch to make it the most romantic in the world, this suggestion of mystery supplies it.”
I shall never forget his quick bend forward or the long, long look he gave me.
It emboldened me to ask almost seriously:
“Uncle, have you ever felt this presence yourself?”
He laughed a long, hearty, amused laugh, then a strange expression crossed his face unlike any I had ever seen on it before. “There’s romance in these old fancies,—romance,” he murmured—“romance.”
No lover’s voice could have been more tender; no poet’s eye more dreamy.