There was a figure, too, under the lamp--the butler--bending there and rolling up the strip of red carpet. As he pulled its edges from the frozen snow I came on him suddenly. "Oh, it's you, Sir!" He stood erect, and with the air of a man infinitely relieved. "Gervase!" The door opened wide and there stood Elaine in her ball-gown, a-glitter with diamonds. "Gervase, dear, where have you been? We have been terribly anxious--" She said it, looking straight down on me--on me--who stood in my tattered clothes in the full glare of the lamp. And then I heard the butler catch his breath, and suddenly her voice trailed off in wonder and pitiful disappointment. "It's not Gervase! It's Reg--Mr. Travers. I beg your pardon. I thought--" But I passed up the steps and stood before her: and said, as she drew back-- "There has been an accident. Gervase has shot himself." I turned to the butler. "You had better run to the police station. Stay: take this revolver. It won't count anything as evidence: but I ask you to examine it and make sure all the chambers are loaded." A thud in the hall interrupted me. I ran in and knelt beside Elaine, and as I stooped to lift her--as my hand touched her hair--this was the jealous question on my lips-- "What has _she_ to do with it. It is _I_ who cannot do without him--who must miss him always!" A PAIR OF HANDS AN OLD MAID'S GHOST-STORY "Yes," said Miss Le Petyt, gazing into the deep fireplace and letting her hands and her knitting lie for the moment idle in her lap. "Oh, yes, I have seen a ghost. In fact I have lived in a house with one for quite a long time." "How you _could_--" began one of my host's daughters; and "_You_, Aunt Emily?" cried the other at the same moment. Miss Le Petyt, gentle soul, withdrew her eyes from the fireplace and protested with a gay little smile. "Well, my dears, I am not quite the coward you take me for. And, as it happens, mine was the most harmless ghost in the world. In fact"--and here she looked at the fire again-- "I was quite sorry to lose her." "It was a woman, then? Now _I_ think," said Miss Blanche, "that female ghosts are the horridest of all. They wear little shoes with high red heels, and go about _tap, tap_, wringing their hands." "This one wrung her hands, certainly. But I don't know about the high red heels, for I never saw her feet. Perhaps she was like the Queen of Spain, and hadn't any. And as for the hands, it all depends _how_ you wring them. There's an elderly shop-walker at Knightsbridge, for instance--" "Don't be prosy, dear, when you know that we're just dying to hear the story." Miss Le Petyt turned to me with a small deprecating laugh. "It's such a little one." "The story, or the ghost?" "Both." And this was Miss Le Petyt's story:--