life--depended on Jane Pegler. In a sense Blanche Farrow had but two
close friends in the world--her host, Lionel Varick, the new owner of
Wyndfell Hall; and the plain, spare, elderly woman standing now before
her. She realized with a sharp pang of concern what Pegler's mental
defection would mean to her. It would be dreadful, _dreadful_, if Pegler
began seeing ghosts, and turning hysterical.

"What was the spirit like?" she asked quietly.

And then, all at once, she had to suppress a violent inclination to
burst out laughing. For Pegler answered with a kind of cry, "A 'orrible
happarition, ma'am!"

Miss Farrow could not help observing a trifle satirically: "That
certainly sounds most unpleasant."

But Pegler went on, speaking with a touch of excitement very unusual
with her: "It was a woman--a woman with a dreadful, wicked, spiteful
face! Once she came up close to my bed, and I wanted to scream out, but
I couldn't--my throat seemed shut up."

"D'you mean you actually saw what you took to be a ghost?"

"I did see a ghost, ma'am; not a doubt of it! She walked up and down
that room in there, wringing her hands all the time--I'd heard the
expression, ma'am, but I'd never seen anyone do it."

"Did anything else happen?"

"At last she went over to the window, and--and I'm afraid you won't