“Oh, I am no judge of course of what a Boyce may do!” said his wife carelessly.  “I leave that to you and the neighbourhood.”

Mr. Boyce looked uncomfortable, cooled down, and presently when the coffee came back asked his wife for a fresh supply in tones from which all bellicosity had for the time departed.  He was a small and singularly thin man, with blue wandering eyes under the blackest possible eyebrows and hair.  The cheeks were hollow, the complexion as yellow as that of the typical Anglo-Indian.  The special character of the mouth was hidden by a fine black moustache, but his prevailing expression varied between irritability and a kind of plaintiveness.  The conspicuous blue eyes were as a rule melancholy; but they could be childishly bright and self-assertive.  There was a general air of breeding about Richard Boyce, of that air at any rate which our common generalisations connect with the pride of old family; his dress was careful and correct to the last detail; and his hands with their long fingers were of an excessive delicacy, though marred as to beauty by a thinness which nearly amounted to emaciation.

“The servants say they must leave unless the ghost does, Marcella,” said Mrs. Boyce, suddenly, laying a morsel of toast as she spoke on Lynn’s nose.  “Someone from the village of course has been talking—­the cook says she heard something last night, though she will not condescend to particulars—­and in general it seems to me that you and I may be left before long to do the house work.”

“What do they say in the village?” asked Marcella eagerly.

“Oh! they say there was a Boyce two hundred years ago who fled down here from London after doing something he shouldn’t—­I really forget what.  The sheriff’s officers were advancing on the house.  Their approach displeased him, and he put an end to himself at the head of the little staircase leading from the tapestry-room down to my sitting-room.  Why did he choose the staircase?” said Mrs. Boyce with light reflectiveness.

“It won’t do,” said Marcella, shaking her head.  “I know the Boyce they mean.  He was a ruffian, but he shot himself in London; and, any way, he was dead long before that staircase was built.”

“Dear me, how well up you are!” said her mother.  “Suppose you give a little lecture on the family in the servants’ hall.  Though I never knew a ghost yet that was undone by dates.”

There was a satiric detachment in her tone which contrasted sharply with Marcella’s amused but sympathetic interest. Detachment was perhaps the characteristic note of Mrs. Boyce’s manner,—­a curious separateness, as it were, from all the things and human beings immediately about her.

Marcella pondered.

“I shall ask Mr. Harden about the stories,” she said presently.  “He will have heard them in the village.  I am going to the church this morning.”

Her mother looked at her—­a look of quiet examination—­and smiled.  The Lady Bountiful airs that Marcella had already assumed during the six weeks she had been in the house entertained Mrs. Boyce exceedingly.