you at Sir William Jute's I can't conceive.
_I_ didn't undertake to make a man-servant of you, sir."

The pale, harassed lad flew at the bread, cut it with a vast scattering
of crumbs, handed it clumsily round, and then took glad advantage of a
short supply of coffee to bolt from the room to order more.

"Idiot!" said Mr. Boyce, with an angry frown, as he disappeared.

"If you would allow Ann to do her proper parlour work again," said his
wife blandly, "you would, I think, be less annoyed. And as I believe
William was boot boy at the Jutes', it is not surprising that he did not
learn waiting."

"I tell you, Evelyn, that our position _demands_ a man-servant!" was the
hot reply. "None of my family have ever attempted to run this house with
women only. It would be unseemly--unfitting--incon--"

"Oh, I am no judge of course of what a Boyce may do!" said his wife
carelessly. "I leave that to you and the neighbourhood."

Mr. Boyce looked uncomfortable, cooled down, and presently when the
coffee came back asked his wife for a fresh supply in tones from which
all bellicosity had for the time departed. He was a small and singularly
thin man, with blue wandering eyes under the blackest possible eyebrows
and hair. The cheeks were hollow, the complexion as yellow as that of
the typical Anglo-Indian. The special character of the mouth was hidden
by a fine black moustache, but his prevailing expression varied between
irritability and a kind of plaintiveness. The conspicuous blue eyes were
as a rule melancholy; but they could be childishly bright and
self-assertive. There was a general air of breeding about Richard Boyce,
of that air at any rate which our common generalisations connect with
the pride of old family; his dress was careful and correct to the last
detail; and his hands with their long fingers were of an excessive
delicacy, though marred as to beauty by a thinness which nearly amounted
to emaciation.

"The servants say they must leave unless the ghost does, Marcella," said
Mrs. Boyce, suddenly, laying a morsel of toast as she spoke on Lynn's
nose. "Someone from the village of course has been talking--the cook
says she heard _something_ last night, though she will not condescend to
particulars--and in general it seems to me that you and I may be left
before long to do the house work."

"What do they say in the village?" asked Marcella eagerly.

"Oh! they say there was a Boyce two hundred years ago who fled down
he