It was evident that Sir Gilbert Clare was very much put out by the scene just enacted on the terrace. As soon as the last of the servants had gone back indoors he re-entered the drawing-room, where Trant now proceeded to light the centre lamp and the candles in the girandoles, and resumed his seat by Lady Pell. Luigi and Ethel, at the opposite end of the long room, were engaged in turning over a book of foreign photographs. He was always glad to put as wide a space as possible between his "grandfather" and himself, and she had tact enough to be aware that after so untoward an interruption, the baronet might not be in the humour for any more music.

"Now, who," said Sir Gilbert, "can have put the notion into that silly girl\'s head about the so-called Grey Brother? (Of course you know the family legend, Louisa.) She has only been about half-a-year in my service, and, if I remember aright, she came to us all the way from Sussex."

"But she did not mention the Grey Brother by name, did she?" queried her ladyship. "As I understood her, what she said was, that when opposite the drawing-room windows she was confronted by a tall, dark, hooded figure--nothing more specific than that."

"And what could such a description refer to, pray, except to the Grey Brother? I suppose that in the servants\' hall such legends die hard, and that any story, or incident which savours of the supernatural, is handed down from one generation of domestics to another. If we could get to the bottom of the affair, I have no doubt we should find that this Sussex girl has had the legend recounted to her by somebody, and that it so impressed her imagination that the first time she finds herself alone in the grounds in the dusk of evening, she is prepared to distort every queer-looking shrub or bush into a semblance of the family apparition, and, indeed, would feel herself rather aggrieved than otherwise should it fail to appear to her. You may rely upon it, that girl Ogden will be the heroine of the servants\' hall for half a year to come."

"Still, it seems clear to me that she saw something. I never witnessed a more genuine case of fright. But of course the question is what that something was."

"Had there been a moon, I should have said that what frightened her was nothing more substantial than her own shadow. In all likelihood it was a poacher, or a tramp, or some other vagabond who was prowling about where he had no business to be. And that reminds me of something."

He rose and rang the bell, and then to Trant, who responded to the summons, he said: "Send for Bostock, and bid him and his man keep a sharp lookout to-night. I have reason to suppose that there are one or more bad characters lurking about the grounds."

Bostock was the keeper who, some years before, had succeeded Martin Rigg, the latter having been permanently disabled in a poaching affray. Martin Rigg, it may be remembered, was the last to bid God-speed to Alec Clare on that night when Sir Gilbert pronounced sentence of banishment on his eldest son.

"I presume from what you said just now," remarked Lady Pell when Trant had come and gone, "that of late years you have not been troubled by any of these visitations, or appearances, or whatever is the proper term for them?"

"Not for twenty years, or more, so that I felt myself justified in hoping that the Grey Brother had died a natural death and been buried out of sight for ever. Now I come to think, it was a little while before Alec left home--um--um--for the last time that we were bothered and annoyed with quite a series of appearances, or what were said to be such."

"Ah, poor Alec--poor boy--what a fate was his!" exclaimed her ladyship with a sigh. "The apparition has never manifested itself to you, Cousin Gilbert?"

"Certainly not," replied Sir Gilbert with emphasis. "Nor to my father before me. My mother fancied that she caught a glimpse of the figure on several occasions, not outside the house where it is generally said to be seen, but indoors, in the picture-gallery, or on the stairs, or elsewhere; but she was an excitable woman--excitable in more ways than one--and my father always pooh-poohed her statements of what she professed to have seen as so many hallucinations, although, as a matter of course, he wholly failed in converting her to his own point of view."

Next morning, on coming down to breakfast, Lady Pell found by her plate a black-bordered letter bearing a French postmark. At sight of it she exclaimed: "Then the poor child is dead! What a pity! And he was the only grandson."

Sir Gilbert, who was already seated at table, glanced inquiringly at her.

"I think I told you," she said in answer to the look, "that it was originally my intention, after leaving the Shrublands, to have gone direct to France, there to stay till well on for Christmas with a very old friend of mine, indeed, the only one of my school companions whose friendship I have retained till now. On the eve of starting I received a letter from Julie in which she asked me, in consequence of her grandson\'s illness, to put off my visit till I should hear from her again. It was merely a feverish cold, she wrote, and not the slightest danger was apprehended. But this black-bordered missive, even before I open it, tells me but too surely what has happened."

She said no more, but opened the letter. Tears were in her eyes when she laid it down a couple of minutes later. For awhile the meal progressed in silence.

Sir Gilbert was the first to speak. "Am I right, Louisa, in supposing that, owing to your friend\'s loss, your visit to Franc............