Words seemed to fail him, and in an agitated manner he swallowed two or three glasses of wine in quick succession.
“Why, sir,” Irene asked irrelevantly, “do you seem to be always drinking wine?”
“Because,” he answered sadly, “I dropped dead while I was drinking the health of Lady Betty Rafferty, and since then I have to do it whenever I am in the presence of mortals.”
“But can you not stop?”
“Only when your ladyship is pleased to command me,” he replied, with all his old-fashioned elaborateness of courtesy.
“And as to the diamonds,” Irene said, coming back to that subject with an abruptness which seemed to be most annoying to the ghost, “of what possible use can they be to you in your present condition?”
“What use?” echoed the shade of the major, with much fierceness. “They are my occupation. I am their guardian spirit.”
“But,” she urged, bringing to bear those powers of logic upon which she always had prided herself, “you drink the ghost of wine, don’t you?”
“Certainly, madam,” the spirit answered, evidently confused.