The story had taken hold upon us as we sat round the blazing hearth of Lord Ormont's smoking-room, at Castle Aminta, and sufficiently interfered with our comfort, as indeed from various points of view, not to specify any one of the many, for they were, after all, in spite of their diversity, of equal value judged by any standard, not even excepting the highest, that of Vereker's disturbing narrative of the uncanny visitor to his chambers, which the reader may recall--indeed, must recall if he ever read it, since it was the most remarkable ghost-story of the year--a year in which many ghost-stories of wonderful merit, too, were written--and by which his reputation was made--or rather extended, for there were a certain few of us, including Feverel and Vanderbank and myself, who had for many years known him as a constant--almost too constant, some of us ventured, tentatively perhaps, but not the less convincedly, to say--producer of work of a very high order of excellence, rivalling in some of its more conspicuous elements, as well as in its minor, to lay no stress upon his subtleties, which were marked, though at times indiscreetly inevident even to the keenly analytical, hinging as these did more often than not upon abstractions born only of a circumscribed environment--circumscribed, of course, in the larger sense which means the narrowing of a circle of appreciation down to the select few constituting its essence--the productions of the greatest masters of fictional style the world has known, or is likely, in view of present tendencies towards miscalled romance, which consists solely of depicting scenes in which bloodshed and murder are rife, soon to know again--it was proper it should, in a company chosen as ours had been from among the members of The Involvular Club, with Adrian Feverel at its head, Vereker as its vice-president, and Lord Ormont, myself, and a number of ladies, including Diana of the Crossways, and little Maisie--for the child was one of our cares, her estate was so pitiable a one--Rhoda Fleming, Daisy Miller, and Princess Cassimassima, one and all, as the reader must be aware, personages--if I may thus refer to a group of appreciation which included myself--who knew a good thing when they saw it, which, it may as well be confessed at once, we rarely did in the raucous fields of fiction outside of, though possibly at times moderately contiguous to, our own territory, although it should be said that Miss Miller occasionally manifested a lamentable lack of regard for the objects for which The Involvular was formed, by showing herself, in her semi-American way, regrettably direct of speech and given over not infrequently to an unhappy use of slang, which we all, save Maisie, who was young, and, in spite of all she knew, not quite so knowledgeable a young person as some superficial observers have chosen to believe, sincerely deprecated, and on occasion when it