"I will report all discoveries tending that way immediately, sir," answered the detective, bowing his visitors out of the office.
"How are you impressed with Mr. Shelton's powers as a detective, Lance?" asked Mr. Lawrence as they walked on a few blocks before hailing a car.
"I believe he is an able man, but—I am not prepared to subscribe to his theory of the event which happened to-night," was the somewhat hesitating reply of the young man.
"You are not? What, then, is your opinion?" asked the banker, in some surprise.
"Mr. Lawrence, I believe that it was really and truly our lost Lily whom we beheld to-night," said Lancelot, earnestly.
"Really and truly our Lily! Come, Lance, you talk wildly. Has your affliction turned your brain, poor boy? Recollect that Lily is dead."
"I know—I know. Who could realize that fact more forcibly than I do? But, my dear friend, I did not mean that it was Lily in the flesh. What I meant was that Lily's spirit, the better part of her which is imperishable, really and truly appeared to us to-night," said the young man, who was of a very impressive and imaginative cast of mind.
Mr. Lawrence regarded him curiously.
"But why should you persist in this belief, Lance, when the clever Mr. Shelton has so clearly shown us the fallacy of the idea?"
"He has not shown us the fallacy of the idea at all," answered Lancelot Darling earnestly, as before. "He has only given us his practical theory regarding it."