"There is a house over there," remarked the general, rather grimly; "but not quite what you'd call a hospitable hotel."
"It's curious," said his wife sadly, "that we should be caught in a storm with no house near but that one, of all others."
Something in her tone seemed to check the younger man, who was both sensitive and comprehending; but nothing of that sort daunted the man from Toronto.
"What's the matter with it?" he asked. "Looks rather like a ruin."
"That place," said the general dryly, "belongs to the Marquis of Marne."
"Gee!" said Sir John Cockspur. "I've heard all about that bird, anyhow; and a queer bird, too. Ran him as a front-page mystery in the Comet last year. 'The Nobleman Nobody Knows.'"
"Yes, I've heard of him, too," said young Mallow in a low voice. "There seem to be all sorts of weird stories about why he hides himself like that. I've heard that he wears a mask because he's a leper. But somebody else told me quite seriously that there's a curse on the family; a child born with some frightful deformity that's kept in a dark room."
"The Marquis of Marne has three heads," remarked Romaine quite gravely. "Once in every three hundred years a three-headed nobleman adorns the family tree. No human being dares approach the accursed house except a silent procession of hatters, sent to provide an abnormal number of hats. But,"—and his voice took one of those deep and terrible turns, that could cause such a thrill in the theatre—"my friends, those hats are of no human shape."
The American lady looked at him with a frown and a slight air of distrust, as if that trick of voice had moved her in spite of herself.
"I don't like your ghoulish jokes," she said; "and I'd rather you didn't joke about this, anyhow."