The phantom seemed to hesitate; it wavered like a pale reflection cast
against the pall. Then, in the tones which Verrian knew, the answer
came:

"Ask her. She will tell you."

The phantom had scored a hit, and the applause was silenced with
difficulty; but Verrian felt that Miss Shirley had lost ground. It could
not have been for the easy cleverness of such a retort that she had
planned the affair. Yet, why not? He was taking it too seriously. It
was merely business with her.

"And I haven't even the right to half a question more!" Bushwick
lamented, in a dramatized dejection, and crossed slowly back from the
library to his place.

"Why, haven't you got enough?" one of the men asked, amidst the gay
clamor of the women.

The ghost was gone again, and its evanescence was discussed with ready
wonder. Another of the men went round to tempt his fate, and the phantom
suddenly reappeared so near him that he got a laugh by his start of
dismay. "I forgot what I was going to ask, he faltered.

"I know what it was," the apparition answered. "You had better sell."

"But they say it will go to a hundred!" the man protested.

"No back--talk, Rogers!" Bushwick interposed. "That was the