hat a man with even an unreasonable grudge could
hardly resist it, "If you call it dispassionate."

Verrian could not help laughing. "Well, passionate, then. I don't know
why it should be so confoundedly vexatious. But somehow I would have
chosen Miss Macroyd--Is she specially dear to you?"

"Not the least!"

"I would have chosen her as the last person to have the business, which
is so inexpressibly none of my business--"

"Or mine, as I think you remarked," Bushwick interposed.

"Come out through," Verrian concluded, accepting his interposition with
a bow.

"I see what you mean," Bushwick said, after a moment's thought. "But,
really, I don't think it's likely to go further. If you want to know,
I believe Miss Macroyd feels the distinction of being in the secret
so much that she'll prefer to hint round till Mrs. Westangle gives the
thing away. She had to tell me, because I was there with her when she
saw you with the young lady, to keep me from going with my curiosity to
you. Come, I do think she's honest about it."

"Don't you think they're rather more dangerous when they're honest?"

"Well, only when they're obliged to be. Cheer up! I don't believe Miss
Macroyd is one to spoil sport."

"Oh, I think I shall live through it," Verrian said, rather stiffening
again. But he relaxed, in rising from his chair, and said, "Well,
good-night, old fellow. I believe I shall go to bed now."

"You won't wait for me till my pipe's out?"

"No, I think not. I seem to be just making it, and if I waited I might
lose my grip." He offered Bushwick a friendly hand.

"Do you suppose it's been my soothing conversation? I'm like the actor
that the doctor advised to go and see himself act. I can't talk myself
sleepy."

"You might try it," Verrian said, going out.

XVIII.

The men who had talked of going away on Thursday seemed to have found
it practicable to stay. At any rate, they were all there on the Saturday
night for the ghost-seeing, and, of course, none of the women had gone.
What was more remarkable, in a house rather full of girls, nobody was
sick; or, at least, everybody was well enough to be at dinner, and,
after dinner, at the dance, which impatiently, if a little ironically,
preceded the supernatural part of the evening's amusement. It was the
decorum of a woman who might have been expected not to have it that Mrs.
Westangle had arranged that the evening's amusement should not pass the
bound between Saturda