No, he did not believe it, even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before; he was still incredulous and fought against his senses.

“What do you want with me?” inquired Darcy

“Much!” George Darcy’s voice, no doubt about it.

“Who are you?” Darcy demanded, knowing the answer but feeling compelled to ask anyway.

The ghost raised a quizzical eyebrow, “Ask me who I was.”

“Who were you then?” asked Darcy.

“In life I was your father, George Darcy.”

“Can you—can you sit down?” Darcy asked the question because he didn’t know whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair and felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation.

“I can.”

“Please do so then, sir,” said Darcy, looking doubtfully at him.

The ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it. “You do not believe in me,” observed the Ghost.

“I do not,” said Darcy.

“What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?”

“I do not know,” said Darcy.

“Why do you doubt your senses?”

“Because,” said Darcy, “alcohol affects them. I do not usually indulge in the grape as much as I did this evening. I am sure there is more of the cask than of the casket about you, whatever you are!”

Darcy was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention and keeping down his terror, for the specter’s voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.