"Wherever he is, I can bear it," Fleda said. "But I haven't the least idea where he is." "I'll leave it all to my solicitor. He won't let her off: by Jove, I know the fellow!"!

"A bibelot the more or the less," Fleda said, "could have made little difference in this grand general view of you. I take you simply for the greatest of all conjurers. You've operated with a quickness—and with a quietness!" Her voice trembled a little as she spoke, for the plain meaning of her words was that what her friend had achieved belonged to the class of operation essentially involving the protection of darkness. Fleda felt she really could say nothing at all if she couldn't say that she knew what the danger had been. She completed her thought by a resolute and perfectly candid question: "How in the world did you get off with them?" Fleda considered; her friend had taken her up with a smothered ferocity by which she was slightly disconcerted. "I don't mean of course that he should surrender everything; but he might let you pick out the things to which you're most attached."

She stopped again before the bench, and an inspiration came to her. "I should think you would know," she said with proper dignity. "Yes, henceforth there'll be a ghost or two." "Why, of the whole wretched thing."