In a sense Blanche Farrow had but two close friends in the world--her host, Lionel Varick, the new owner of Wyndfell Hall; and the plain, spare, elderly woman standing now before her.

She realized with a sharp pang of concern what Pegler's mental defection would mean to her.

It would be dreadful, _dreadful_, if Pegler began seeing ghosts, and turning hysterical.
"What was the spirit like ?" she asked quietly.
And then, all at once, she had to suppress a violent inclination to burst out laughing.

For Pegler answered with a kind of cry, "A 'orrible happarition, ma'am!" Miss Farrow could not help observing a trifle satirically: "That certainly sounds most unpleasant." But Pegler went on, speaking with a touch of excitement very unusual with her: "It was a woman--a woman with a dreadful, wicked, spiteful face! Once she came up close to my bed, and I wanted to scream out, but I couldn't--my throat seemed shut up." "D'you mean you actually saw what you took to be a ghost ?" "I did see a ghost, ma'am; not a doubt of it! She walked up and down that room in there, wringing her hands all the time--I'd heard the expression, ma'am, but I'd never seen anyone do it." "Did anything else happen ?" "At last she went over to the window, and--and I'm afraid you won't believe me, ma'am--but there seemed no curtains there any more, nothing but just an opening into the darkness.

I saw her bend over--" An expression of terror came over the woman's face.
"But how could you _see_ her," asked Miss Farrow quickly, "if there was no light in the room ?" "In a sort of way," said Pegler somberly, "the spirit was supplying the light, as it were.