Alresca was flushed. He spoke in short, hurried sentences. Alternately

his tones were passionate and studiously cold. Rosa's lovely

presence, her musical chatter, her gay laughter, filled the room. She

seemed to exhale a delightful and intoxicating atmosphere, which

spread itself through the chamber and enveloped the soul of Alresca.

It was as if he fought against an influence, and then gradually

yielded to the sweetness of it. I observed him closely--for was he not

my patient?--and I guessed that a struggle was passing within him. I

thought of what he had just been saying to me, and I feared lest the

strong will should be scarcely so strong as it had deemed itself.

"You have dined?" asked Alresca.

"I have eaten," she said. "One does not dine after a day's

travelling."

"Won't you have some coffee?"

She consented to the coffee, which Alexis John Smedley duly brought

in, and presently she was walking lightly to and fro, holding the tiny

white cup in her white hand, and peering at the furniture and

bric-a-brac by the light of several candles. Between whiles she

related to Alresca all the news of their operatic acquaintances--how

this one was married, another stranded in Buenos Ayres, another ill

with jealousy, another ill with a cold, another pursued for debt, and

so on through the diverting category.

"And Smart?" Alresca queried at length.

I had been expecting and hoping for this question.

"Oh, Sir Cyril! I have heard nothing of him. He is not a person that

interests me."

She shut her lips tight and looked suddenly across in my direction,

and our eyes met, but she made no sign that I could interpret. If she

had known that the little jewelled dagger lay in the room over her

head!

Her straw hat and thin white veil lay on a settee between two windows.

She picked them up, and began to pull the pins out of the hat. Then

she put the hat down again.

"I must run away soon, Alresca," she said, bending over him, "but

before I leave I should like to go through the whole house. It seems

such a quaint place. Will you let Mr. Foster show me? He shall not be

away from you long."

"In the dark?"

"Why not? We can have candles."

And so, a heavy silver candlestick in either hand, I presently found

myself preceding Rosa up the wide branching staircase of the house.

We had left the owner with a reading-lamp at the head of his couch,

and a copy of "Madame Bovary" to pass the time.

We stopped at the first landing to examine a picture.

"That mysterious complaint that he had, or thought he had, in London

has left him, has it not?" she asked me suddenly, in a low, slightly

apprehensive, confidential tone, moving her head in the direction of

the salon below.




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