the lady.'

'Do you know her?'

'Not in the least.'

'Hadn't you better see her?'

'My dear Mortimer, you have studied my character. Could I possibly go
down there, labelled "ELIGIBLE. ON VIEW," and meet the lady, similarly
labelled? Anything to carry out M. R. F.'s arrangements, I am sure, with
the greatest pleasure--except matrimony. Could I possibly support it? I,
so soon bored, so constantly, so fatally?'

'But you are not a consistent fellow, Eugene.'

'In susceptibility to boredom,' returned that worthy, 'I assure you I am
the most consistent of mankind.'

'Why, it was but now that you were dwelling in the advantages of a
monotony of two.'

'In a lighthouse. Do me the justice to remember the condition. In a
lighthouse.'

Mortimer laughed again, and Eugene, having laughed too for the first
time, as if he found himself on reflection rather entertaining, relapsed
into his usual gloom, and drowsily said, as he enjoyed his cigar, 'No,
there is no help for it; one of the prophetic deliveries of M. R. F.
must for ever remain unfulfilled. With every disposition to oblige him,
he must submit to a failure.'

It had grown darker as they talked, and the wind was sawing and the
sawdust was whirling outside paler windows. The underlying churchyard
was already settling into deep dim shade, and the shade was creeping up
to the housetops among which they sat. 'As if,' said Eugene, 'as if the
churchyard ghosts were rising.'

He had walked to the window with his cigar in his mouth, to exalt its
flavour by comparing the fireside with the outside, when he stopped
midway on his return to his arm-chair, and said:

'Apparently one of the ghosts has lost its way, and dropped in to be
directed. Look at this phantom!'

Lightwood, whose back was towards the door, turned his head, and there,
in the darkness of the entry, stood a something in the likeness of a
man: to whom he addressed the not irrelevant inquiry, 'Who the devil are
you?'

'I ask your pardons, Governors,' replied the ghost, in a hoarse
double-barrelled whisper, 'but might either on you be Lawyer Lightwood?'

'What do you mean by not knocking at the door?' demanded Mortimer.

'I ask your pardons, Governors,' replied the ghost, as before, 'but
probable you was not aware your door stood open.'

'What do you want?'

Hereunto the ghost again hoarsely replied, in its double-barrelled
manner, 'I ask your pardons, Governors, but might one on you be Lawyer
Light