“Did she cook that omelette?  Then I am sure she is perfectly respectable; and pray let her see as many ghosts as she cares to, especially if it leads to nothing worse than her taking a moderate quantity of brandy.  Time to smoke, Lindy.  I am off.”

I dragged myself up after my usual fashion, and was preparing to follow him, when Lady Atherley, directly he was gone, began: 

“It is such a pity that clever people can never see things as others do.  George always goes on in this way as if the ghost were of no consequence, but I always knew how it would be.  Of course it is nice that George should come in for the place, as he might not have done if his uncle had married, and people said it would be delightful to live in such an old house, but there are a good many drawbacks, I can assure you.  Sir Marmaduke lived abroad for years before he died, and everything has got into such a state.  We have had to nearly refurnish the house; the bedrooms are not done yet.  The servants’ accommodation is very bad too, and there was no proper cooking-range in the kitchen.  But the worst of all is the ghost.  Directly I heard of it I knew we should have trouble with the servants; and we had not been here a month when our cook, who had lived with us for years, gave warning because the place was damp.  At first she said it was the ghost, but when I told her not to talk such nonsense she said it was the damp.  And then it is so awkward about visitors.  What are we to do when the fishing season begins?  I cannot get George to understand that some people have a great objection to anything of the kind, and are quite angry if you put them into a haunted room.  And it is much worse than having only one haunted room, because we could make that into a bachelor’s bedroom—­I don’t think they mind; or a linen cupboard, as they do at Wimbourne Castle; but this ghost seems to appear in all the rooms, and even in the halls and passages, so I cannot think what we are to do.”

I said it was extraordinary, and I meant it.  That a ghost should venture into Atherley’s neighbourhood was less amazing than that it should continue to exist in his wife’s presence, so much more fatal than his eloquence to all but the tangible and the solid.  Her orthodoxy is above suspicion, but after some hours of her society I am unable to contemplate any aspects of life save the comfortable and the uncomfortable:  while the Universe itself appears to me only a gigantic apparatus especially designed to provide Lady Atherley and her class with cans of hot water at stated intervals, costly repasts elaborately served, and all other requisites of irreproachable civilisation.

But before I had time to say more, Atherley in his smoking-coat looked in to see if I was coming or not.

“Don’t keep Mr. Lyndsay up late, George,” said my kind hostess; “he looks so tired.”