Book 2 Chapter 7

It was very dark in the window-recess, shut off from the room by the heavy blue curtains which fell to the floor in thick folds. The room itself was not in complete darkness, for the fire, built up by Chloe with assumed extravagance before she went to bed, had burned down to a steady red glow, now and then illumined by a dancing gleam of light as a tiny flame of gas sputtered from some specially charged coal; and as Anstice peeped cautiously through a carefully arranged chink in the curtains he could see the pretty room with fair distinctness. The chairs were standing about with the peculiarly uncanny effect known to all who enter a room after it has been finally deserted for the night--an effect as of waiting for some ghostly visitors to fill their pathetic emptiness and hold high revel or stately converse in the place lately peopled by mere human beings.

On a little table by the fire stood a chess-board, the old carved red and white pieces standing on it in jumbled disarray; for Chloe and her husband, both inveterate chess-lovers, had begun a game which they were unable, through lack of time, to finish; and as his eyes fell on the board Anstice had a queer fancy that if he and Major Carstairs were not present two ghostly chess-players would issue softly from the shadows and rearrange the pieces for another and perhaps more strenuously-contested duel.