midst the gay
clamor of the women.

The ghost was gone again, and its evanescence was discussed with ready
wonder. Another of the men went round to tempt his fate, and the phantom
suddenly reappeared so near him that he got a laugh by his start of
dismay. "I forgot what I was going to ask, he faltered.

"I know what it was," the apparition answered. "You had better sell."

"But they say it will go to a hundred!" the man protested.

"No back--talk, Rogers!" Bushwick interposed. "That was the
understanding.

"But we didn't understand," one of the girls said, coming to the rescue,
"that the ghost was going to answer questions that were not asked. That
would give us all away."

"Then the only thing is for you to go and ask before it gets a chance to
answer," Bushwick said.

"Well, I will," the girl returned. And she swept round into the library,
where she encountered the phantom with a little whoop as it started
into sight before her. "I'm not going to be scared out of it!" she said,
defiantly. "It's simply this: Did the person I suspect really take the
ring."

The answer came, "Look on the floor under your dressing-table!"

"Well, if I find it there," the girl addressed the company, "I'm a
spiritualist from this time forth." And she came back to her place,
where she remained for some time explaining to those near how she had
lately lost her ring and suspected her maid, whom she had dismissed.

Upon the whole, the effect was serious. The women, having once started,
needed no more urging. One after another they confronted and questioned
the oracle with increasing sincerity.

Miss Macroyd asked Verrian, "Hadn't you better take your chance and stop
this flow of fatuity, Mr. Verrian?"

"I'm afraid I should be fatuous, too," he said. "But you?"

"Oh, thank you, I don't believe in ghosts, though this seems to be a
very pretty one--very graceful, I mean. I suppose a graceful woman would
be graceful even when a disembodied spirit. I should think she would be
getting a little tried with all this questioning; but perhaps we're only
reading the fatigue into her. The ghost may be merely overdone."

"It might easily be that," Verrian assented.

"Oh, may I ask it something now?" a girl's voice appealed to Bushwick.
It was the voice of that Miss Andrews who had spoken first, and first
refused to question the ghost. She was the youngest of Mrs. Westangle's
guests, and Verrian had liked her, with a sense of something preci