see the fun of it. Perhaps, since you possess such a fund of humor, you will be telling me next that I am dead, also."
Then came that laugh again. I never shall forget it. Beginning with a cackling titter, it spread until the whole table was in a roar, making my very flesh creep. Then all at once it ceased, and again there was dead silence.
"Certainly you are dead ,” said the old lady with the camellias. "She's dead, and all of us are dead. She died this morning of acute congestion of the lungs, but I have been dead for these twenty years, and he, too," indicating with her fan the elderly gentleman with the pink nose. "My own complaint was cerebrospinal meningitis."
My legs gave way under me and I sank into my chair. As I did so my hand touched Mabel's, and I grasped hers tightly. It was cold as ice. Leaning toward me, she whispered in my ear:
"Don't make a scene! It is all quite true. You were run over an hour ago by a trolley car."
Not daring to believe my senses, I replied:
"And this house—?"
"Sh—h!" said Mabel. "t is only the ghost of a house,—the phantasmal reproduction of an old mansion that used to stand on this spot, where there has been an empty lot for fifteen years past."
"I—I think I understand," I gasped. Then, though my brain swam, I made a tremendous effort to summon up my courage and face composedly this dreadful situation. Addressing myself to the old woman opposite, I said:
"Perchance you were acquainted with the former occupants of this dwelling?"
"Oh, yes," she answered pleasantly. "I am somewhat distantly related to our host and hostess of this evening. They were drowned lost on the ill-fated Ville de Paris. This house belonged to them, and not very long afterwards it was torn down."
"But suppose that the present owner of the lot were to build upon it?" I suggested. "It would be necessary to hold these charming entertainments elsewhere?"
"Not at all," she said, laughing and waving her fan. "The
