"The McHugh diamonds?" echoed the ghost stammeringly, as if the shock of the surprise, under which he grew perceptibly thinner, was almost more than his incorporeal frame could endure.
"Yes," responded Irene. "Of course I have no claim on them, but the family is in severe need, and--"
"They wish to sell my diamonds!" exclaimed the wraith, starting up in wrath. "The degenerate, unworthy--"
Words seemed to fail him, and in an agitated manner he swallowed two or three glasses of wine in quick succession.
"Why, sir," Irene asked irrelevantly, "do you seem to be always drinking wine?"
"Because," he answered sadly, "I dropped dead while I was drinking the health of Lady Betty Rafferty, and since then I have to do it whenever I am in the presence of mortals."
"Only when your ladyship is pleased to command me," he replied, with all his old-fashioned elaborateness of courtesy.
"And as to the diamonds," Irene said, coming back to that subject with an abruptness which seemed to be most annoying to the ghost, "of what possible use can they be to you in your present condition?"
"What use?" echoed the shade of the major, with much fierceness. "They are my occupation. I am their guardian spirit."
"But," she urged, bringing to bear those powers of logic upon which she always had prided herself, "you drink the ghost of wine, don't you?"
"Certainly, madam," the spirit answered, evidently confused.
"Then why can you not be content with guarding the ghost of the McHugh diamonds, while you let the real, live Arthur McHugh have the real stones?"
"Why, that," the apparition returned, with true masculine perversity, "is different--quite different."
"Now I am the guardian of a genuine treasure. I am the most considerable personage in our whole circle."
"You would not understand," the shape said, "so I will, with your permission, omit the explanation. If I gave up the diamonds, I should be only a common drinking ghost--a thing to be gossiped about and smiled at."
"You would be held in reverence as the posthumous benefactor of your family," she urged.
"I am better pleased with things as they are. I have no great faith in the rewards of benefactors; and the people benefited would not belong to our circle, either."