The ghost of the dead-and-gone major stared more than before. "I beg your pardon?" he responded, in a thinly interrogative tone. "Pray be seated," Irene invited him for the third time. The ghost wavered into an old-fashioned high-backed chair, which remained distinctly visible through his form, and for a moment or two the pair eyed each other in silence. The situation seemed somehow to be a strained one even to the ghost. "It seems to me," Irene said, breaking the silence, "that it would be hard for you to refuse the request of a lady." "Oh, impossible," the ghost quavered, with old-time gallantry; "especially of a lovely creature like some we could mention. Anything," he added in a slightly altered tone, as if his experiences in ghostland had taught him the need of caution--"anything in reason, of course." Irene smiled her most persuasive smile. "Do I look like one who would ask unreasonable things?" she asked. "I am sure that nothing which you should ask could be unreasonable," the ghost replied, with so much gallantry that Irene had for a moment a confused sense of having lost her identity, since to have a ghost complimenting her naturally gave her much the feeling of being a ghost herself. "And certainly the McHugh diamonds can do you no good now," Miss Gaspic continued, introducing her subject with truly feminine indirectness. "The McHugh diamonds?" echoed the ghost stammeringly, as if the shock of the surprise, under which he grew perceptibly thinner, was almost more than his incorporeal frame could endure. "Yes," responded Irene. "Of course I have no claim on them, but the family is in severe need, and--" "They wish to sell my diamonds!" exclaimed the wraith, starting up in wrath. "The degenerate, unworthy--" Words seemed to fail him, and in an agitated manner he swallowed two or three glasses of wine in quick succession. "Why, sir," Irene asked irrelevantly, "do you seem to be always drinking wine?" "Because," he answered sadly, "I dropped dead while I was drinking the health of Lady Betty Rafferty, and since then I have to do it whenever I am in the presence of mortals." "But can you not stop?" "Only when your ladyship is pleased to command me," he replied, with all his old-fashioned elaborateness of courtesy. "And as to the diamonds," Irene said, coming back to that subject with an abruptness which seemed to be most annoying to the ghost, "of what possible use can they be to you in your present condition?" "What use?" echoed the shade of the major, with much fierceness. "They are my occupation. I am their guardian spirit." "But," she urged, bringing to bear those powers of logic upon which she always had prided herself, "you drink the ghost of wine, don't you?" "Certainly, madam," the spirit answered, evidently confused. "Then why can you not be content with guarding the ghost of the McHugh diamonds, while you let the real, live Arthur McHugh have the real stones?"