'A ghost!' he exclaimed, with his gold glasses on his long, thin nose.
'Yes, sir—so they say.'
'They—who? Stuff! If this absurd story gets abroad, we shall find ourselves a subject for the speculation of the vulgar here and the spiritualists everywhere; and the house may be beset by all manner of intruders. And what is it like?'
'Nobody knows; a tall man in black, I have heard,' replied the butler.
'Black! How do ghosts or spirits get clothes?'
'I don't know, Sir Carnaby.'
'Of course you don't, how should you? Your spirits are in wood,' chuckled the baronet. 'I have heard of tables spinning about, of bells ringing, banjos playing, of sticks beating on a drum-head by unseen hands, and even of people flying through the air at séances, but I'll have none of that nonsense at Carnaby Court. It's bad style—vulgar—very! We'll send for the disembodied police, and have your ghost taken up as a rogue and impostor.'
Quite a gay party had assembled for the Christmas festivities at the old Court; there were Major Desmond, and two of his brother officers, with his intended, one of the belles of the last season at Tyburnia, Colonel and Lady Rakes, Lord Brixton, and many more, including old Lord Bayswater and Charley Rakes, a mere lad, steeped already in folly or worse, yet very much disposed to lionise and patronise the pretty Violet.
When Trevor Chute and Vane first arrived they were both shocked—the latter particularly so—to find a great and fatal change had come over Ida, and it had come suddenly too, as Clare asserted. Jerry had begun to feel the sweetness of cheated hope, but this was fading now. She seemed in a decline apparently; large dark circles were under her eyes, and their old soft sweetness of gaze was blended with a weird and weary look of infinite melancholy at times; and when Clare had expressed to Sir Carnaby a hope that she might yet wed Jerry out of pity—
'Let her wed him for anything, for—by Jove, this sort of thing is great boredom,' sighed or grumbled the baronet.