The girl laughed too. "Not unless you want to be haunted by his ghost."
With a backward flashing glance, she went into the kitchen, and Van Alen, lighting a cigarette, started to explore the old house.
Except for the wing, occupied by the caretaker, nothing had been disturbed since the family, seeking new fortunes in the city, had left the old homestead to decay among the desolate fields that yielded now a meagre living for Mrs. Brand and her four strapping sons.
In the old parlor, where the ancient furniture showed ghostlike shapes in the dimness, and the dead air was like a tomb, Van Alen found a picture of his great-grandfather.
The little man had been painted without flattery. There he sat—Lilliputian on the great charger! At that moment Van Alen hated him—that Hop-o'-my-Thumb of another age, founder of a pigmy race, who, by his braggart will, had that night brought upon this one of his descendants the scorn of a woman.
And even as he thought of her, she came in, with the yellow flare of a candle lighting her vivid face.
"I thought you might need a light," she said; "it grows dark so soon."
As he took the candle from her, he said abruptly: "I shall not sleep in the canopy bed; there is a couch in the room."
"Oh," her tone was startled, "you shouldn't have taken all that I said in earnest."
"But you meant it?"