‘The apparition, you mean,’ corrects Mr. Fitzgerald severely. ‘Prisoners, as a rule, have bodies, spooks have none. Jacky, you lucky creature, you have seen a ghost.’ ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ asks Betty in an anxious tone. ‘A most pertinent question?’ says Fitzgerald, who is taking the situation with anything but the seriousness that is so evidently demanded of it. ‘But, as I have before remarked, there is no body to go by, and naturally no clothes. It is therefore unanswerable.’ Crosby has said nothing. He is, indeed, deeply occupied with the face. So this is Wyndham’s tenant. A very lovely one. Again a slight doubt arises in his mind about his friend. And yet Wyndham had seemed thoroughly honest in his explanation. ‘I know it’s a girl,’ says Susan, with decision. ‘Jacky has seen her; and what a pretty one! Oh, there, she’s gone!’ And, indeed, the Hamadryad, as if becoming suddenly conscious of the fact that they are looking at her, draws back her head and disappears. ‘I’m afraid she saw us,’ says Susan contritely. ‘She must have thought us very rude. I’ll ask father to let me call on her, I think. She must be very lonely there. And even if she is only Mrs. Moriarty’s niece, still, she must have been educated to make her look like that.’ ‘Perhaps,’ says Crosby, speaking with apparent carelessness, and looking direct at Susan, ‘she might not like to be called upon. I have been given to understand that she is not a niece of Mrs. Moriarty’s, and—’ ‘No, but what, then?’ asks Carew. ‘A tenant of Mr. Wyndham’s. He is a friend of mine, you know; and he told me lately he had grown very tired of the Cottage, and was willing to take a tenant for it. This lady is, I presume, the tenant.’ ‘The more reason why we should call upon her,’ says Susan. ‘But isn’t she very young,’ says Betty, ‘to be a tenant all by herself?’ This startling suggestion creates a slight pause. ‘To be young is not to be beyond misfortune,’ says Crosby at last, in a grave and very general tone. ‘No doubt this young lady has lost her father and mother, and is obliged to—er—do without them.’ This is distinctly lame. ‘Poor thing!’ says Susan sympathetically. ‘We might ask her over here sometimes,’ says Carew. ‘But if she has lost her parents lately,’ puts in Crosby hastily, ‘she might, perhaps—one should not even with the best intentions force one’s self upon people in such deep grief as hers.’ ‘She wasn’t in mourning, any way,’ says Betty, who can always tell you to a pin what anyone is wearing; ‘she had a little blue bow near her neck.’ Crosby recovers from this blow with difficulty. ‘At all events,’ says he, ‘I have heard through Wyndham that she desires privacy at present. No doubt when she feels equal to receiving visitors she will let us all know.’ ‘No doubt,’ says Dominick, who has been studying Mr. Crosby closely, and with covert amusement.