"Yes," said Peggy. "I wish you weren't. I'm just going to forget all you've said, and we will go on being friendly. I am a good deal keener on friendship than on the other relationship." "Are you?" he said, surprised, as though that were an attitude he had never contemplated before; that he found, indeed, difficult to reconcile with his ideas of girls. "I'm not. But the half loaf, you know... I will content myself with that for the present--only for the present." How, he wondered, when he returned with Peggy to the drawing-room--which he would have preferred not to do, and only agreed to on her showing him that it might be remarked if he left without taking leave in the usual manner--had he been deceived into making such a miscalculation? Clearly Peggy was a heartless little flirt. She had assuredly encouraged him. He was conscious as he entered the drawing-room in her wake of a slight diminution in his regard for her. There is nothing like a wound to the pride for clearing a man's vision. "For goodness' sake," exclaimed Peggy, looking back at him over her shoulder as he emerged behind her through the glass doors, "don't wear so long a face. It will be remarked." Doctor Fairbridge, who felt little inclination towards cheerfulness, mended his expression none the less; but the smile which he summoned to his aid was rather forced. "I can't act," he said reproachfully. "You've hurt me. I'm feeling sore, Miss Annersley." "Don't be silly," Peggy admonished him. "You needn't look sore, anyhow." She led him towards her sister, and left him with her, feeling assured that Sophy would administer an anodyne; Sophy had helped to heal wounds of her making before. She had the knack of putting a man in better conceit with himself; it is a knack which springs from the dictates of a kindly nature. Peggy herself joined a group of young people who were listening with sceptical amusement to the history of the Hall ghost which Mr Errol, newly arrived, was relating. Peggy seated herself near him. "Do you believe in ghosts?" she asked. "Well," he replied with gravity, "there is so much which is incomprehensible that I cannot discredit things merely because I fail to understand them." She looked at him with interest, while the scepticism of the rest strove courteously to efface itself. "I heard of the ghost from Robert," she announced. "Hannah has seen it. But Robert didn't seem to know very much about it. It is respectable to have a ghost. I hope it is a pleasant one." "There are two," he said. "Good gracious!" exclaimed Peggy. "Two misty apparitions! Hannah doesn't own to seeing two. I might be able to stand one, but two would be the death of me. Who are they?" "One is a hound," he explained; "the other is a lady. They have been seen walking on the terrace in the dusk. They walk the length of the terrace and back, look towards the west, and disappear." "And then does something awful happen?" inquired one of the listeners.