He would not take a chair, but stood on the rug with his back to the fire. As I sat looking up at his tall figure, I caught the painted eye of my priestly ancestor over his shoulder, and it seemed to me to twinkle with saturnine humour. "Well, what have you seen, Calbot?" "Some evil thing has come between Miss Burleigh and me, and has parted us. I have seen it--two or three times. She has felt it. It's killing her, Drayton. As for me.... You know me pretty well, and you know what my life has been thus far. I've not been a good man, of course--quite the contrary; I've done any quantity of bad things, but I don't know that I've committed any such hideous sin as ought to bring a punishment like this upon me--not to speak of _her_! I'm not a parricide, nor an adulterer; I never sold my salvation to the devil--did I, Drayton?" "No, no, of course not, my dear Calbot. You have a fever, that's all. Don't get excited. Just lie down on the sofa for half an hour, and quiet yourself a little." "I see you think I'm out of my head, and no wonder. I behave like a madman. But I'm not mad at all; I wish I could think I were. This shuddering--it won't last--but I tell you, Drayton, when you see a man of my health and strength stricken this way in two days, you may believe it would have driven many a man to madness, or to suicide----" "Let me pour it out for you; your hand shakes so. I can give you some splendid French cognac, if you'd prefer it? Well. Hadn't you better lie down?" "Come, I can control myself, now--I will!" said Calbot, through his teeth, and putting a strong constraint upon himself. For about a minute he kept silent, the blood gradually coming into his cheeks and the nervous twitchings growing less frequent. "That's better," said I, encouragingly. "You don't look so much as though you'd seen a ghost, now. How is that Chancery case of yours getting on?" "A ghost? You speak lightly enough, and I suppose your idea of a ghost is some conventional bogey such as children are scared with. We laugh at such things--heaven knows why! An evil, sin-breathing spirit, coming from hell to take vengeance, for some dead and buried wrong, upon living men and women--what is there laughable in that?" "Really, Calbot," I said, with a smile--a rather uneasy smile, be it admitted--"I never laughed at a ghost, for the simple reason that I never saw one to laugh at." "You never saw one, and you mean to hint, I suppose, that there are none to see?" "Well," returned I, still maintaining a precarious grimace, "I'm not a spiritualist, you know----"