“So it is,” said Hugh; “every one knows that.”
Mr. Arnold was struck dumb with indignation. Before he had recovered himself sufficiently to know what to say, the conversation between the other two had assumed a form to which his late experiences inclined him to listen with some degree of interest. But, his pride sternly forbidding him to join in it, he sat sipping his wine in careless sublimity.
“You have seen it yourself, then?” said the Bohemian.
“I did not say that,” answered Hugh. “But I heard one of the maids say once—when—”
He paused.
This hesitation of his witnessed against him afterwards, in Mr. Arnold’s judgment. But he took no notice now.—Hugh ended tamely enough:
“Why, it is commonly reported amongst the servants.”
“With a blue light?—Such as we saw that night from the library window, I suppose.”
“I did not say that,” answered Hugh. “Besides, it was nothing of the sort you saw from the library. It was only the moon. But—”
He paused again. Von Funkelstein saw the condition he was in, and pressed him.