posite put the question quite
unconcernedly, but I was back in the description of your triumphant
dinner-party, and was unpleasantly startled. I answered with a little
temper, therefore, that of course I believed in them; and I did not
encourage him to further conversation by a glance in his direction.

Had I seen any? he inquired; and I answered "Hundreds." After a minute,
repenting of my incivility, I put your letter down, and told him that
that was why he saw me getting my breakfast before him. And I even
explained--for why need a self-respecting woman be disagreeable even to
an unknown colonial in an ill-made flannel suit, and with rough
hair?--that I had been working too hard lately, and that the shades of
people, dead or in distant lands, well-known and half-forgotten, had
taken to appearing before me, when I lifted my eyes from my book.

"In fact, I have come here to get rid of ghosts," I told him; and he
said he hoped I had not come to the wrong place. "Why, you surely don't
think 'The Continental' haunted?" I inquired.

Then he told me, with an appearance of perfect gravity, that a ghost
had visited him last night.

"It is just possible that _my_ ghosts have lost their way in this
bewildering place and have strolled in to you, by mistake," I
suggested.

"You don't happen to have seen any since you came here?"

"I only came last night."

"And you didn't see one?"

"No! Do I look as if I had?"

"Not the ghost of a terrified man, for instance, flying up in bed?"

"Good gracious, no! Why?"

"I thought you might have done," he said, and went on with his
breakfast.

You'll say he talked such nonsense to get me to look at him,
Berthalina; and of course I did. He has not the appearance of a seer of
ghosts: a huge, heavy man, with a hump on a big, characterful nose; a
powerful jaw, and very quick, blue eyes beneath shaggy eyebrows. The
talk of ghosts seemed out of place on such firm lips.

"Was your ghost that of a terrified man, etc.?" I asked him, in spite
of myself.

He gave a vigorous shake of his head. "Thank heavens, no!" he said. "In
that case I shouldn't have given it two thoughts."

"Of what then?"

"Of a beautiful woman."

He spoke with much deliberation, and his eyes upon my face were
serious.

"What was she like? Describe her."

He turned away to reach a bit of bread from a neighbouring table. "She
was very much like you," he said.

You may be sure I let him see then that he had g