“Oh, that’s his affair,” said Jan.  “It’s hard to guess what he may do; he is one that won’t be dictated to.  If it were some people’s case, they’d say to Sibylla, ’Now you have got two husbands, choose which you’ll have, and keep to him.’”

“Good heavens, Mr. Jan!” exclaimed Miss Deb, shocked at the loose sentiments the words appeared to indicate.  “And suppose she should choose the second?  Have you thought of the sin?  The second can’t be her husband; it would be as bad as those Mormons.”

“Looking at it in a practical point of view, I can’t see much difference, which of the two she chooses,” returned Jan.  “If Fred was her husband once, Lionel’s her husband now; practically I say you know, Miss Deb.”

Miss Deb thought the question was going rather into metaphysics, a branch of science which she did not understand, and so was content to leave the controversy.

“Any way, it is dreadful for her,” she said, with another shiver.  “Oh, Mr. Jan, do you think it can really be true?”

“I think that there’s not a doubt of it,” he answered, stopping in his pounding.  “But you need not think so, Miss Deb.”

“How am I to help thinking so?” she simply asked.

“You needn’t think either way until it is proved.  As I suppose it must be, shortly.  Let it rest till then.”

“No, Mr. Jan, I differ from you.  It is a question that ought to be sought out and probed; not left to rest.  Does Sibylla know it?”

“Not she.  Who’d tell her?  Lionel won’t, I know.  It was for her sake that he bound me to silence.”

“She ought to be told, Mr. Jan.  She ought to leave her husband—­I mean, Mr. Lionel—­this very hour, and shut herself up until the doubt is settled.”

“Where should she shut herself?” inquired Jan, opening his eyes.  “In a convent?  Law, Miss Deb!  If somebody came and told me I had got two wives, should you say I ought to make a start for the nearest monastery?  How would my patients get on?”

Rather metaphysical again.  Miss Deb drew Jan back to plain details—­to the histories of the various ghostly encounters.  Jan talked and pounded; she sat on her hard seat and listened, her brain more perplexed than it could have been with any metaphysics known to science.  Eleven o’clock disturbed them, and Miss Deborah started as if she had been shot.

“How could I keep you until this time!” she exclaimed.  “And you scarcely in bed for some nights!”

“Never mind, Miss Deb,” answered good-natured Jan.  “It’s all in the day’s work.”

He opened the door for her, and then bolted himself in for the night.  For the night, that is, if Deerham would allow it to him.  Hook’s daughter was slowly progressing towards recovery, and Jan would not need to go to her.

Amilly was nodding over the fire, or, rather, where the fire had been, for it had gone out.  She inquired with wonder what her sister had been doing, and where she had been.  Deborah replied that she had been busy; and they went upstairs to bed.