"That sort of thing's quite old-fashioned, isn't it, Mr. Brooks? We're
going to stay with you. You can smoke. Ann, bring the cigars."
Mrs. Bullsom, who was looking forward to a nap in a quiet corner of
the drawing-room, obeyed with resignation written large on her
good-natured, somewhat flushed face. But Mr. Bullsom, who wanted to
revert to the subject which still fascinated him, grunted.
"Hang these new ideas," he said. "It's you they're after, Mr. Brooks.
As a rule, they're off before I can get near my cigar-box."
Selina affected a little consciousness, which she felt became her.
"Such foolishness, papa. You don't believe it, do you, Mr. Brooks?"
"Am I not to, then?" he asked, looking down upon her with a smile.
Whereupon Selina's consciousness became confusion.
"How stupid you are," she murmured. "You can believe just what you
like. What are you looking at over in the corner of the room?"
"Ghosts," he answered.
Yet very much as those images flitted at that moment through his brain,
so events were really shaping themselves in that bare clean-swept room
into which his eyes had for a moment strayed away.
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