y night and Sunday morning. The supper was to be
later, but that was like other eating and drinking on the Sabbath; and
it was to be a cold supper.

At half-past ten the dancing stopped in the foyer and the drawing-room,
and by eleven the guests were all seated fronting the closed doors of
the library. There were not so many of them but that in the handsome
space there was interval enough to lend a desired distance to the
apparitions; and when the doors were slid aside it was applausively
found that there was a veil of gauze falling from the roof to the floor,
which promised its aid in heightening the coming mystery. This was again
heightened by the universal ignorance as to how the apparitions were to
make their advents and on what terms.

It was with an access of a certain nervous anxiety that Verrian found
himself next Miss Macroyd, whose frank good-fellowship first expressed
itself in a pleasure at the chance which he did not share, and then
extended to a confidential sympathy for the success of the enterprise
which he did not believe she felt. She laughed, but 'sotto voce', in
bending her head close to his and whispering, "I hope she'll be equal
to her 'mise en scene'. It's really very nice. So simple." Besides the
gauze veil, there was no preparation except in the stretch of black
drapery which hid the book-shelves at the farther wall of the library.

"Mrs. Westangle's note is always simplicity," Verrian returned.

"Oh yes, indeed! And you wish to keep up the Westangle convention?"

"I don't see any reason for dropping it."

"Oh, none in the world," she mocked.

He determined to push her, since she had tried to push him, and he
asked, "What reason could there be?"

"Now, Mr. Verrian, asking a woman for a reason! I shall begin to think
some one else wrote your book, too! Perhaps she'll take up supplying
ideas to authors as well as hostesses. Of course, I mean Mrs.
Westangle."

Verrian wished he had not tried to push Miss Macroyd, and he was still
grinding his teeth in a vain endeavor to get out some fit retort between
them, when he saw Bushwick shuffling to his feet, in the front row of
the spectators, and heard him beginning a sort of speech.

"Ladies and gentlemen: Mrs. Westangle has chosen me, because a
real-estate broker is sometimes an auctioneer, and may be supposed to
have the gift of oratory, to make known the conditions on which you may
interview the ghosts which you are going to see. Anybody ma