Jarvis whistled meditatively. The Duke looked disgusted; this was so absolutely against all rules of his own conduct with women.
"Well, what do you know about that?"
Warren was again silent. The Duke was tabulating his own material and preparing his next charge of ammunition.
"Ghost is a broad term, your Excellency. There are fifty-seven varieties of them, just like good pickles. They're equally bad for the digestion. What is your particular conception of this particular ghost?"
The Duke answered impatiently.
"There are certain occult forces in this world, Mr. Warren, that science cannot classify or fathom. Some of them are at work in that castle, manifesting their weird powers. A priest might call them demons or fiends—a psychologist might term them, perhaps, returned spirits.... I can't say; but I have been there, and heard their curious warnings and manifestations. There is something definable there, in the periphery of those ancient ruins. A malignant spiritual force lurks within that mediæval stronghold. While it haunts those musty halls it is madness for any man to expose himself there."
"You could write a good book on it, Duke," observed Jarvis irreverently. "Have you ever seen this ghost?"
"My brother has," interrupted Maria Theresa impetuously. "Twice, to my knowledge, before I left Seguro. So had my father and the others who disappeared from human ken!"
"Good Lord!" and there was a touch of the mock-heroic in the Kentuckian's voice, which escaped his companions.
"According to the family tradition," continued the Princess, "no one has ever seen it three times, and lived to tell the story."