"Heavens, no!" he retracted. "You are a marvel of beauty. I don't wonder that your husband was jealous." She did not appear to have heard the last remark.
"How I used to live in terror of ghosts," she cried, looking about apprehensively. "Would you believe it, sir, up to the time I was married I could not bear the thought of being left alone in the house for a single minute of the night. The darkness, the mystic flicker of the lights, the stillness seemed to swarm with spirits—Oh, you don't know how I suffered with the fear of them."
"And after you got married—what then?"
"I soon had material spirits to contend with."
"How so?"
"That is an extremely personal inquiry, sir."
"I beg pardon if I have overstepped the bounds of politeness."
"I may as well tell you that my husband drank terribly. It's all over the country anyhow, I hear."
"The Gloame pedigree says that you drove him to it."
"I know that is what the Gloames claim, but it is a shameless slander. My poor, dear husband has told me since that he was wrong and he would give all he has on earth to set me aright in that hateful old pedigree. The poor fellow killed himself, you doubtless know. I was never so shocked in my life as when I heard that he had committed such a brutal act." Mrs. Gloame was looking sadly, reminiscently into the fire and there was a trace of tears in her voice.