e looked
like a little girl dressed up for an old lady. She had a ribbon of the
MacGregor tartan on her cap, and an uncompromising cairngorm fastened
her fichu of valuable point lace. A figure more out of place than hers
in an ancient Arab palace of Algiers it would be impossible to conceive;
yet it was a pleasant figure to see there, and Stephen knew that he was
going to like Nevill's Aunt Caroline, Lady MacGregor.

"I wish you looked more of a monster than you do," said she, "because
you might frighten the ghosts. We're eaten up with them, the way some
folk in old houses are with rats. Nearly all of them slaves, too, so
there's no variety, except that some are female. I've given you the room
with the prettiest ghosts, but if you're not the seventh son of a
seventh son, you may not see or even hear them."

"Does Nevill see or hear?" asked Stephen.

"As much as Aunt Caroline does, if the truth were known," answered her
nephew. "Only she couldn't be happy unless she had a grievance. Here she
wanted to choose an original and suitable one, so she hit upon
ghosts--the ghosts of slaves murdered by a cruel master."

"Hit upon them, indeed!" she echoed indignantly, making her knitting
needles click, a movement which displayed her pretty, miniature hands,
half hidden in lace ruffles. "As if they hadn't gone through enough, in
flesh and blood, poor creatures! Some of them may have been my
countrymen, captured on the seas by those horrid pirates."

"Who was the cruel master?" Stephen wanted to know, still smiling,
because it was almost impossible not to smile at Lady MacGregor.

"Not my brother James, I'm glad to say," she quickly replied. "It was
about three hundred years before his time. And though he had some quite
irritating tricks as a young man, murdering slaves wasn't one of them.
To be sure, they tell strange tales of him here, as I make no doubt
Nevill has already mentioned, because he's immoral enough to be proud of
what he calls the romance. I mean the story of the beautiful Arab lady,
whom James is supposed to have stolen from her rightful husband--that
is, if an Arab can be rightful--and hidden in this house far many a
year, till at last she died, after the search for her had long, long
gone by."

"You're as proud of the romance as I am, or you wouldn't be at such
pains to repeat it to everybody, pretending to think I've already told
it," said Nevill. "But I'm going to show Knight his quarters. Pretty or
plai