'Of course you don't, how should you? _Your_ spirits are in wood,' chuckled the baronet. 'I have heard of tables spinning about, of bells ringing, banjos playing, of sticks beating on a drum-head by unseen hands, and even of people flying through the air at _séances_, but I'll have none of that nonsense at Carnaby Court. It's bad style--vulgar--very! We'll send for the disembodied police, and have your ghost taken up as a rogue and impostor.' Quite a gay party had assembled for the Christmas festivities at the old Court; there were Major Desmond, and two of his brother officers, with his intended, one of the belles of the last season at Tyburnia, Colonel and Lady Rakes, Lord Brixton, and many more, including old Lord Bayswater and Charley Rakes, a mere lad, steeped already in folly or worse, yet very much disposed to lionise and patronise the pretty Violet. When Trevor Chute and Vane first arrived they were both shocked--the latter particularly so--to find a great and fatal change had come over Ida, and it had come suddenly too, as Clare asserted. Jerry had begun to feel the sweetness of cheated hope, but this was fading now. She seemed in a decline apparently; large dark circles were under her eyes, and their old soft sweetness of gaze was blended with a weird and weary look of infinite melancholy at times; and when Clare had expressed to Sir Carnaby a hope that she might yet wed Jerry out of pity-- 'Let her wed him for anything, for--by Jove, this sort of thing is great boredom,' sighed or grumbled the baronet. 'The idea of you, Captain Chute, eloping with our new mamma,' said Violet, when she met him. 'That led to my being of service to your father, Violet--to my being here to-night,' he added, in a tender whisper to Clare, as the ladies left the dining-table, and Sir Carnaby changed his seat to the head of the table. 'Ugh!' said he, in a low voice, 'unless poor Ida brightens up a little, a doleful Christmas we are likely to have of it; but I am glad to see you, Vane--the wine stands with you--pass the bottles, and don't insult my butler by neglecting to fill your glass.' With all his affected breeze of manner, his desire to appear juvenile before Lady Evelyn, and all his inborn selfishness, both Vane and Chute could perceive that the failing health of his favourite daughter had affected him. The unwelcome crow's-feet were deeper about his eyes; his general 'get-up' was less elaborate; his whiskers were out of curl, and like what remained of his hair, showed, by an occasional patch of grey, that dye was sometimes forgotten.