Page:A Thin Ghost and Others.djvu/26

How so?’ ‘Well, by telling him foolish tales I had picked up in Ireland of what we call the second sight.’ ‘Second sight! What kind of sight might that be?’ ‘Why, you know our ignorant people pretend that some are able to foresee what is to come—sometimes in a glass, or in the air, maybe, and at Kildonan we had an old woman that pretended to such a power. And I daresay I coloured the matter more highly than I should: but I never dreamed Frank would take it so near as he did.’ ‘You were wrong, my lord, very wrong, in meddling with such superstitious matters at all, and you should have considered whose house you were in, and how little becoming such actions are to my character and person or to your own: but pray how came it that you, acting, as you say, a play, should fall upon anything that could so alarm Frank?’ ‘That is what I can hardly tell, sir: he passed all in a moment from rant about battles and lovers and Cleodora and Antigenes to something I could not follow at all, and then dropped down as you saw.’ ‘Yes: was that at the moment when you laid your hand on the top of his head?’ Lord Saul gave a quick look at his questioner—quick and spiteful—and for the first time seemed unready with