This is a mystery plot in which the supernatural furnishes the
interest. In dealing with the supernatural Mrs. Wharton does not
allow it to become horrible or grotesque. She secures plausibility
by having for its leading characters practical business men--not a
woman, hysterical or otherwise, really appears--and by placing
them in a perfectly conventional setting. The apparition is not
accompanied by blood stains, shroud, or uncanny noises. Sometimes
the writer of the supernatural feels that he must explain his
mystery by material agencies. The effect is to disappoint the
reader who has yielded himself to the conditions imposed by the
author, and is willing, for the time at least, to believe in
ghosts. Mrs. Wharton makes no such mistake. She does not spoil the
effect by commonplace explanation.
In characterization Mrs. Wharton reveals the power not only to
analyze subtly temperaments and motives, but also to describe
vividly with a few words. This phrasal power is illustrated when
she says of Faxon that he "had a healthy face, but dying hands,"
and of Lavington that "his pinched smile was screwed to his blank
face like a gaslight to a whitewashed wall."