"They do talk awful hifalutin," corroborated Hester. "I've heard 'em say things that hadn't no meanin' whatsoever to me, and yet they was plain English too."
"Well, if you ask me," and Thorpe looked important, "I'd jest say keep your eye on one of them women."
"You mean that red-headed varmint, I know," said his wife. "Well, she's a handful, all right, but I don't believe she'd go so far's to kill anybody."
"You don't, don't you? Well, she'd go just so far as there was any goin' at all,--an' then she'd go right on. Oh, I kin read character," and Thorpe plumed himself so evidently on his mental powers that Stebbins snorted outright.
"You're, a hummer, you are! I s'pose you're clairvoyant, yourself! Well, let me advise you to keep your trap shut about Miss--that lady you referred to. This is my house, and those are my tenants, and I won't stand any talk from _you_ about 'em."
"That's right, Thorpe," admonished his wife. "Mr. Stebbins, he's right. An' he's right about the ghosts, too. Why, I happen to know that the spooks warned that little Reid girl she'd die at four o'clock, and die she did, jest at four! Can you beat it? Spooks? Why, of course it was spooks! What else?"
"Yes, and the message was that two of 'em 'd die, and two of 'em did," added Stebbins. "How could any mortal human bein' bring that about? I ask you?"
"Land! I don't know! I told you I didn't. But," and Thorpe wagged his head positively, "it wasn't spooks."
The same questions were being discussed in the hall by the ones more intimately interested.
Doctor Wayburn had arrived, and he and Crawford were shut in the drawing room endeavouring to wrest from the unknown, the secret of Gifford Bruce's death.
The little group, still gathered in the hall, were talking earnestly of the immediate future.
"It's so pathetic," Norma was saying, "that there are so few to mourn for poor little Vernie. That child had actually no relatives but her uncle and Mr. Braye."
"Wynne is a sort of a cousin, too," put in Milly, "and indeed, Norma, I feel as sorry as if Vernie had been my own sister."
"Oh, I don't mean that,--of course, we all feel that way. But, she was so alone in the world. Mr. Braye is terribly broken up. He loved her----"