The Professor’s pleasure at finding himself once more amongst these familiar surroundings was obvious and intense.  The conversation between him and his brother never flagged.  There were tenants and neighbours to be asked after, matters concerning the estate on which he demanded information.  Even the very servants’ names he remembered.

“It was a queer turn of fate, George,” he declared, as he held out before him a wonderfully chased glass filled with amber wine, “which sent you into the world a few seconds before me and made you Lord of Ashleigh and me a struggling scientific man.”

“The world has benefited by it,” Lord Ashleigh remarked, with more than fraternal courtesy.  “We hear great things of you over here, Edgar.  We hear that you have been on the point of proving most unpleasant things with regard to our origin.”

“Oh! there is no doubt about that,” the Professor observed.  “Where we came from and where we are going to are questions which no longer afford room for the slightest doubt to the really scientific mind.  What sometimes does elude us is the nature of our tendencies while we are here on earth.”

“Mine, I fancy, are obvious enough,” Lord Ashleigh interposed.

“Superficially, I grant it,” his brother acknowledged.  “As a matter of scientific fact, I recognize the probability of your actually being a person utterly different from what you appear.  Man becomes what he is according to the circumstances by which he is assailed.  Now your life here, George, must be a singularly uneventful one.”

“Not during the last six months,” Lord Ashleigh remarked, with a sigh.  “Even these last few days have been exciting enough.  I must confess that they have left me with a queer sort of nervousness.  I find myself listening intently sometimes,—­conscious, as it were, of the influence or presence of some indefinite danger.”

“Very interesting,” the Professor murmured.  “Spiritualism, as an exact science, has always interested me very much.”

Lady Ashleigh made a little grimace.

“Don’t encourage George,” she begged.  “He is much too superstitious, as it is.”

There was a brief silence.  The port had been placed upon the table and coffee served.  The servants, according to the custom of the house, had departed.  The great apartment was empty.  Even Quest was impressed by some peculiar significance in the long-drawn-out silence.  He looked around him uneasily.  The frowning regard of that long line of painted warriors seemed somehow to be full of menace.  There was something grim, too, in the sight of those empty suits of armour.

“I may be superstitious,” Lord Ashleigh said, “but there are times, especially just lately, when I seem to find a new and hateful quality in silence.  What is it, I wonder?  I ask you but I think I know.  It is the conviction that there is some alien presence, something disturbing lurking close at hand.”