When Guy first "saw the ghost," if it may be so phrased, at Waynflete, he had felt its effect upon him simply as a disgrace; and, though he knew somewhat better now, his instincts had never allowed him to treat it otherwise. A reasonable man might have consulted a doctor, and found out how to deal with his own nerves; but down below all Guy's opinions on the subject, all the explanations which he gave himself, there was an awful conviction of the personality and reality of this thing, which seemed half his double and half his evil genius; and what could any doctor do for that?--while he entertained the most utter disbelief in the genuineness of all modern scientific inquiries into such matters. What! analyse this frightful thing for other people's benefit?--have his experiences printed?--be regarded as a person possessing an enviable faculty denied to others? No; no one who knew what "seeing a ghost" was like could undergo such torture! They were all humbugs. While, as for religious help or consolation, Guy feared spiritual impressions or spiritual efforts; and whether his trouble was the work of his own fancy, a possession of the devil, or a revelation from the unseen, it put him in a different relation to all supernatural questions to that of his fellows. He kept altogether apart from the subject, never joined in religious discussions, nor let himself speculate on religious questions. He feared, also, all his finer impulses; they touched on the terrible and tender point. As he was liable to nervous headaches on other occasions than when the fear of a spiritual presence overwhelmed him, he usually attributed all disturbance that he could not conceal to such a cause. Nobody troubled about a headache. Fainting or palpitations might lead to questions, and be supposed to be dangerous. Of course all this was crude and young and foolish in the extreme; but it was instinctive to a nature, one part of which was so antagonistic to the other. It never could have continued if he had belonged to people of ordinary insight or experience; but the spiritual terrors, to which he was subject, were very uncertain in their recurrence, and, in fact, were usually apt to come upon him at some crisis which excited his nerves; and, in his ordinary life at college, he had suffered less from them than at home, when, certainly, his grand-aunt and his brother were not likely to suspect them. But what was he to do now? If he told, if he could so far oppose his instincts, his aunt would think him a liar, like the other Guy--or mad? That last might be. It was a view of the matter which had not escaped him. As for drinking, well, he might be driven to that before the end. There were times when the brandy was tempting. That was another ancestral ghost that might be more dreadful than the first.