Luigi Rispani\'s quietly spoken words sent a simultaneous thrill through his three listeners.

It may be said to have been the very last answer to his question which Sir Gilbert had expected to receive. Indeed, so disconcerted by it was he, that for a few moments he sat like a man mentally bewildered, who has been asked to accept a statement which his reason refuses to credit, but which he is utterly without the means of refuting. It will be remembered that Lady Pell had already told him of Luigi\'s strange experience that night in the spinny, besides which, there were all those other occasions of late when the apparition was said to have been seen by different members of the household--a body of testimony to which, when considered in the aggregate, he could no longer refuse to accord a certain amount of credence. There were circumstances, however, connected with this last alleged appearance which put it on an entirely different plane from the others, and which could be explained away by no theory either of optics or of self-created illusions with which Sir Gilbert was acquainted.

"And do you mean deliberately to assert," he said at length, addressing himself to Luigi, "that what you have just told us with regard to this so-called Grey Monk is the positive truth, and not an audacious attempt on your part to smother up the real facts of the case?"

"It is the absolute truth, Sir Gilbert, incredible though it may seem. I had heard no sound, but all at once some instinct told me that I was no longer alone. I turned, and by the light of my lantern saw the figure standing in the shadow a little way back in the other room. Its face was towards me, but so hidden by its cowl, that hardly anything could be seen of it except its long grizzled beard. What followed, I hardly know, only that I heard the door shut and the key turned, and realised that I was a prisoner."

"I presume that neither of you spoke to the other?"

"Not a word passed between us."

For a little while Sir Gilbert remained buried in thought. Then he said: "You may go for the present and remain in your own room till I send for you. In what way I may ultimately determine to deal with you I have not yet made up my mind."

When Luigi--glad enough, one may be sure, to get away--had crept out of the room with the air of a whipt cur, Sir Gilbert turned to Lisle. "You must get through your work without me this morning. I need scarcely tell you that I am very much put about by this business. Preserve the notes you have taken, and when you have an hour to spare you may write them out for me. Perhaps I may never need them, but one cannot tell. Come, Louisa."

They went no farther than the morning-room. Lady Pell could not help seeing how shaken Sir Gilbert was, and at her persuasion he drank a glass of sherry.

"The shocking disclosures of this morning," he began after a few minutes given to silent cogitation, "require, as it seems to me, to be considered from two very opposite points of view. On the one hand, there is the audacious palming off upon me of a supposititious grandson and all the side issues resulting therefrom--as to which I shall have something to say later on. On the other hand, there is this mysterious affair of the Grey Monk, to whose most opportune interference we seem to owe it that Captain Verinder\'s vile scheme has suffered such a signal collapse. Now there cannot, I think, be the slightest doubt that, let the origin of the previous appearances have been what it may, there was nothing in the least degree supernatural about last night\'s manifestation. That it was a being of flesh and blood as much as you or I, to my mind admits of no question."

"There I agree with you, Gilbert," remarked Lady Pell. "It was no ghost that locked up Luigi Rispani in the strong room."

"And it was no ghostly hand that wrote the letter which has served so completely to unseal my eyes."

"But who can this mysterious personage be, and where can he have sprung from?"

"And whence and from whom did he obtain the information embodied in his letter to me, which we now know to be absolutely true. Those are questions, Louisa, which there seems little present probability of either you or I being able to answer."

"At any rate," said Lady Pell with a shrug, "it\'s far from pleasant to know that, after everybody is in bed, the house is perambulated by someone who, to answer some purpose of his own, chooses to disguise himself as the family spectre. What becomes of him in the daytime? Who supplies him with food? He would seem to be able to come and go just as he likes, because he has mostly been seen out of doors in one part of the grounds or another."

Sir Gilbert shook his head. "Mysteries all; more than that we cannot say. But stranger than all to me is the fact that, whoever he may be, he should have a knowledge of certain circumstances in the life of my son which only someone intimately acquainted with him during his brief American career would be at all likely to have. But from beginning to end the affair is altogether beyond my comprehension."

"The allegations conveyed in the letter affect Mrs. Clare most seriously."

"They do indeed. You have heard what Rispani said--that she was a consenting party to the fraud concocted by Verinder. But her every action from the time of her introduction to me affords incontestable proof of the fact. Oh, it is vile--vile I could not have believed it of her. No one could have appeared more open and straightforward than she. I had grown to like her, Louisa--to like her very much. I shall feel the blow for many a day to come--no, not for many, because at the most my remaining days can be but few."

"According to the last note you had from her, Mrs. Clare may be here any day."

"Almost at any hour, unless she should choose to break her journey at London instead of coming direct through to the Chase."

"You will see her when she arrives?"

"It will be no more than just that I should do so. Every opportunity shall be afforded her of refuting the charges which have been brought against her, but that she will succeed in doing so I greatly doubt."

Again for two or three minutes he seemed lost in thought, then he went on: "I cannot deny that, in a certain sense, it is an immense relief to me to find that Rispani is not my grandson. I have felt from the first, not merely that he would fail to be a credit to the family, but that he would be nearly sure to entail positive discredit on it, and that the unsullied name of the Clares would be passed on by him fouled and dishonoured to whomsoever might succeed him. Yes, I can afford to be very thankful that, being such as he is, he is proved to be no grandson of mine. Better, far better, that the direct line should die with me than that it should be continued in one so utterly unworthy of the traditions of his race. But with Alec\'s widow it is different. Rispani the impostor we have done with; he will go and trouble us no more; but she--she will still remain my daughter-in-law; how vilely soever she may have acted, whatever she may have been guilty of, the tie is one which cannot be severed."

"With regard to Rispani and that unscrupulous uncle of his, I suppose it is not your intention to take proceedings against them?"

"It would only be treating them after their deserts were I to do so. But the affair will be productive of talk and scandal enough without that."

At this juncture there came a tap at the door which was followed by the entrance of Everard Lisle.

"Mr. Luigi Rispani has just left the house, sir," he said. "I thought it right that you should be told as soon as possible. This note, which he sent me by one of the servants, explains his reason for the step."

Sir Gilbert took the note, and having adjusted his glasses, he read aloud as follows:............