A gentleman smoking a cigar must be very much interested indeed when he removes his weed from his lips and rests the hand whose fingers hold it upon his knee, to the imminent risk of its going out while he pauses and listens.
"And how, sir, do you suppose this occurred—by what agency?" inquired the handsome young gentleman.
"The ghost," answered M. Varbarriere, with a solemn sneer.
Guy Strangways knew he could not be serious, although, looking on his countenance, he could discern there no certain trace of irony as he proceeded.
"Many years later, poor Lady Marlowe, entering that room late at night—her maid slept there, and she being ill, for a change, in the smaller room adjoining (you don't know those rooms, but I have looked in at the door)—beheld what we call the ghost, and never smiled or held up her head after," said the portly old gentleman between the puffs of his cigar.
"Beheld the ghost!"
"So they say, and I believe it—what they call the ghost."
"Did she make an alarm or call her husband?"
"Her husband slept in that remote room at the very back of the house, which, as you see, he still occupies, quite out of hearing. You go down-stairs first, then up-stairs; and as he slept the greater part of two hundred feet away from the front of the house, of course he was out of the question;" and M. Varbarriere sneered again solemnly.
"A housekeeper named Gwynn, I am told, knows all about it, but I believe she is gone."