A gentleman smoking a cigar must be very much interested indeed when he removes his weed from his lips and rests the hand whose fingers hold it upon his knee, to the imminent risk of its going out while he pauses and listens. "And how, sir, do you suppose this occurred--by what agency?" inquired the handsome young gentleman. "The ghost," answered M. Varbarriere, with a solemn sneer. Guy Strangways knew he could not be serious, although, looking on his countenance, he could discern there no certain trace of irony as he proceeded. "Many years later, poor Lady Marlowe, entering that room late at night--her maid slept there, and she being ill, for a change, in the smaller room adjoining (you don't know those rooms, but I have looked in at the door)--beheld what we call the ghost, and never smiled or held up her head after," said the portly old gentleman between the puffs of his cigar. "Beheld the ghost!" "So they say, and I believe it--what they _call_ the ghost." "Did she make an alarm or call her husband?" "Her husband slept in that remote room at the very back of the house, which, as you see, he still occupies, quite out of hearing. You go down-stairs first, then up-stairs; and as he slept the greater part of two hundred feet away from the front of the house, of course he was out of the question;" and M. Varbarriere sneered again solemnly. "A housekeeper named Gwynn, I am told, knows all about it, but I believe she is gone." "And do you really think, sir, that my grandfather lost those deeds _here_?" "I always thought so, and so I told your father, and my information got him into a bad scrape." "You don't, I know, think it occurred supernaturally?" said Guy, more and more bewildered. "Supernaturally; of course it was--how else could it be?" answered the old gentleman, with a drowsy irony. "That room has been haunted, as I have heard, by a devil from the time it was built, in the reign of George II. Can you imagine why General Lennox was put to sleep there?" The young man shook his head. The old one resumed his smoking, leaving his problem unsolved. "It shall be my business to evoke and to lay that devil," said the elderly gentleman, abruptly. "Ought not Lady Jane Lennox to be warned if you really think there is any--any _danger_?" "The danger is to _General_ Lennox, as I suppose." "I don't understand, sir." "No, you don't--better not. I told your poor father my belief once, and it proved fatal knowledge to him. In the day that he ate thereof he died. Bah! it is better to keep your mind to yourself until you have quite made it up--you understand?--and even then till the time for action has come, and not even then, unless you want help. Who will sum up the mischief one of those prating fellows does in a lifetime?" The gentlemen were silent hereupon for a period which I may measure by half a cigar.