sign of the reluctance he showed when the others, including Fenellan,
excused themselves.

'So! we're alone?' he said, when the door of the hall had closed on them.
He kept Nesta talking of the success of the day until she, observing her
mother's look, simulated the setting-in of a frenzied yawn. She was
kissed, and she tripped to her bed.

'Now we are alone,' Nataly said.

'Well, dear, and the day was, you must own . . . ' he sought to trifle
with her heavy voice; but she recalled him: 'Victor!' and the naked
anguish in her cry of his name was like a foreign world threatening the
one he filled.

'Ah, yes; that man, that Jarniman. You saw him, I remember. You
recollected him?--stouter than he was. In her service ever since. Well,
a little drop of bitter, perhaps: no harm, tonic.'

'Victor, is she very ill?'

'My love, don't feel at your side: she is ill, ill, not the extreme case:
not yet: old and ill. I told Skepsey to give the man refreshment: he had
to do his errand.'

'What? why did he come?'

'Curious; he made acquaintance with Skepsey, and appears to have
outwitted poor Skepsey, as far as I see it. But if that woman thinks of
intimidating me now--!' His eyes brightened; he had sprung from