“Simple enough, simple enough,” Harrison explained. “We’d been dodging and skirmishing about the plantation, and, no doubt, I unknowingly scraped the thing off one of the trees. Greatorex saw it when we came out into the light by the lake.” “Yes,” Greatorex commented, “and it was spread out over his coat as neatly as you please--might have been arranged there as a kind of joke.” “Herbert!” his wife ejaculated. “Do you mean that the woman was playing tricks on you; behind your back, as it were?” Harrison clicked his tongue, as if he were facetiously reproving a child. “Not you too, Mrs. Greatorex,” he said. “I--I give you credit for more sense. The truth is that your good husband has brought with him into this life some of the old fears and superstitions that used to rule him when he plundered and murdered on the high seas. Yes--yes--in effect that’s the truth, though we may find a biological explanation for the phenomenon without accepting any theory of reincarnation. It’s--it’s a case of latent cell memory, and to-night it has come out very--very strongly. He can find no explanation but the supernatural. I--I assure you, when a little bit of a breeze sprang up just now and set the poplars whispering, he was absolutely terrified. It only needed another touch to set him crossing himself and calling on his patron saint.” “Oh, Herbert!” Mrs. Greatorex expostulated. “You don’t really believe it was a spirit, do you?” Everyone knew that Greatorex had married beneath him, but his wife’s usual method in company was to maintain a thoughtful silence that covered a multitude of faults. That method was one of her own devising. Her husband had never attempted to correct her. Nor did he now show the least impatience either with her unusual loquacity or her failure to appreciate Harrison’s persiflage. “No, my dear, as a matter of fact, I don’t,” he said; “but if you ask me, our host is almost painfully anxious to prove that the strange lady was of like substance to ourselves, of very flesh and bone subsisting; I forget just how the quotation goes.” “Well, of course she was,” his wife replied with an air of assurance. “What else could she be?” “Er--er--by the way, Mrs. Greatorex,” Harrison put in. “Did you--er--see her plainly? Could you by any chance describe her for--for the purposes of identification?” “Yes, I think I could,” Mrs. Greatorex said cheerfully. “She was wearing a rather dowdy--old-fashioned, at least--white dress, more like a négligée than anything. I thought it funny she should come out in the garden in a thing like that. But I didn’t make out quite what the material was. It looked like a rather fine linen tulle worn over a white linen petticoat, I thought. And she had a common scarf--but of course you’ve got that in your hand now....” “Hm! yes,” Harrison interrupted. “But her face, eh? Did you happen to catch her in profile, by any chance?”