The Bohemian started the new subject which generally follows the ladies’ departure.

“How long is it since Arnstead was first said to be haunted, Mr. Arnold?”

“Haunted!  Herr von Funkelstein?  I am at a loss to understand you,” replied Mr. Arnold, who resented any such allusion, being subversive of the honour of his house, almost as much as if it had been depreciative of his own.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Arnold.  I thought it was an open subject of remark.”

“So it is,” said Hugh; “every one knows that.”

Mr. Arnold was struck dumb with indignation.  Before he had recovered himself sufficiently to know what to say, the conversation between the other two had assumed a form to which his late experiences inclined him to listen with some degree of interest.  But, his pride sternly forbidding him to join in it, he sat sipping his wine in careless sublimity.

“You have seen it yourself, then?” said the Bohemian.

“I did not say that,” answered Hugh.  “But I heard one of the maids say once —­ when —­”

He paused.

This hesitation of his witnessed against him afterwards, in Mr. Arnold’s judgment.  But he took no notice now. —­ Hugh ended tamely enough: 

“Why, it is commonly reported amongst the servants.”

“With a blue light? —­ Such as we saw that night from the library window, I suppose.”

“I did not say that,” answered Hugh.  “Besides, it was nothing of the sort you saw from the library.  It was only the moon.  But —­”

He paused again.  Von Funkelstein saw the condition he was in, and pressed him.

“You know something more, Mr. Sutherland.”

Hugh hesitated again, but only for a moment.

“Well, then,” he said, “I have seen the spectre myself, walking in her white grave-clothes, in the Ghost’s Avenue —­ ha! ha!”

Funkelstein looked anxious.

“Were you frightened?” said he.

“Frightened!” repeated Hugh, in a tone of the greatest contempt.  “I am of Don Juan’s opinion with regard to such gentry.”

“What is that?”

     “’That soul and body, on the whole,
       Are odds against a disembodied soul.’”

“Bravo!” cried the count.  “You despise all these tales about Lady Euphrasia, wandering about the house with a death-candle in her hand, looking everywhere about as if she had lost something, and couldn’t find it?”

“Pooh! pooh!  I wish I could meet her!”

“Then you don’t believe a word of it?”

“I don’t say that.  There would be less of courage than boasting in talking so, if I did not believe a word of it.”

“Then you do believe it?”

But Hugh was too much of a Scotchman to give a hasty opinion, or rather a direct answer —­ even when half-tipsy; especially when such was evidently desired.  He only shook and nodded his head at the same moment.