You might have heard a pin drop in the room. They were listening to the footsteps outside the door, but the footsteps did not make the hush and the nameless horror that pervaded it: the words spoken by Dr. Knox had done that. Old Tamlyn stood, a picture of dismay. For myself, sitting in the window-seat, my feet comfortably stretched out before me, and partially sheltered by the red curtains, I could only gaze at them both.

Janet’s footsteps died away. She appeared to have been crossing the hall to the tea-room. And they began to talk again.

“I do not say that Lady Jenkins is being poisoned; absolutely, deliberately poisoned,” said Dr. Knox, in the hushed tones to which his voice had dropped; “I do not yet go quite so far as that. But I do think that she is in some way being tampered with.”

“In what way?” gasped Tamlyn.

“Drugged.”

The doctor’s countenance wore a puzzled expression as he spoke; his eyes a far-away look, just as though he did not see his own theory clearly. Mr. Tamlyn’s face changed: the astonishment, the alarm, the dismay depicted on it gave place suddenly to relief.

“It cannot be, Arnold. Rely upon it you are mistaken. Who would harm her?”

“No one that I know of; no suspicious person is about her to do it,” replied Dr. Knox. “And there lies the puzzle. I suppose she does not take anything herself? Opium, say?”

“Good Heavens, no,” warmly spoke old Tamlyn. “No woman living is less likely to do that than Lady Jenkins.”

“Less likely than she was. But you know yourself how unaccountably she has changed.”

“She does not take opium or any other drug. I could stake my word upon it, Arnold.”

“Then it is being given to her—at least, I think so. If not, her state is to me inexplicable. Mind you, Mr. Tamlyn, not a breath of this must transpire beyond our two selves,” urged Dr. Knox, his tone and his gaze at his senior partner alike impressively earnest. “If anything is wrong, it is being wilfully and covertly enacted; and our only chance of tracing it home is to conceal our suspicion of it.”

“I beg your pardon, Dr. Knox,” I interrupted at this juncture, the notion, suddenly flashing into my mind, that he was unaware of my presence, sending me hot all over; “did you know I was here?”

They both turned to me, and Dr. Knox’s confused start was a sufficient answer.

“You heard all I said, Johnny Ludlow?” spoke Dr. Knox.

“All. I am very sorry.”

“Well, it cannot be helped now. You will not let it transpire?”

“That I certainly will not.”

“We shall have to take you into our confidence—to include you in the plot,” said Arnold Knox, with a smile. “I believe we might have a less trustworthy adherent.”

“You could not have one more true.”

“Right, Johnny,” added Mr. Tamlyn. “But I do hope Dr. Knox is mistaken. I think you must be, Arnold. What are your grounds for this new theory?”

“I don’t tell you that it is quite new,” replied Dr. Knox. “A faint idea of it has been floating in my mind for some little time. As to grounds, I have no more to go upon than you have had. Lady Jenkins is in a state that we do not understand; neither you nor I can fathom what is amiss with her; and I need not point out that such a condition of things is unsatisfactory to a medical man, and sets him thinking.”

“I am sure I have not been able to tell what it is that ails her,” concurred old Tamlyn, in a helpless kind of tone. “She seems always to be in a lethargy, more or less; to possess no proper self-will; to have parted, so to say, with all her interest in life.”

“Just so. And I cannot discover, and do not believe, that she is in any condition of health to cause this. I believe that the evil is being daily induced,” emphatically continued Dr. Knox. “And if she does not herself induce it, by taking improper things, they are being administered to her by others. You will not admit the first theory, Mr. Tamlyn?”

“No, that I will not. Lady Jenkins no more takes baneful drugs of her own accord than I take them.”

“Then the other theory must come up. It draws the point to a narrow compass, but to a more startling one.”

“Look here, Arnold. If I did admit the first theory you would be no nearer the light. Lady Jenkins could not obtain drugs, and be everlastingly swallowing them, without detection. Madame St. Vincent would have found her out in a day.”

“Yes.”

“And would have stopped it at once herself, or handed it over to me to be dealt with. She is truly anxious for Lady Jenkins, and spares no pains, no time, no trouble for her.”

“I believe that,” said Dr. Knox. “Whatsoever is being done, Madame St. Vincent is kept in the dark—just as much as we are. Who else is about her?”

“No one much but her maid, that I know of,” replied old Tamlyn, after a pause of consideration. “And I should think she was as free from suspicion as madame herself. It seems a strange thing.”

“It is. But I fear I am right. The question now will be, how are we to set about solving the mystery?”

“She is not quite always in a lethargic state,” observed Tamlyn, his thoughts going off at a tangent.

“She is so more or less,” dissented Dr. Knox. “Yesterday morning I was there at eight o’clock; I went early purposely, and she was in a more stupidly lethargic state than I had before seen her. Which of course proves one thing.”

“What thing? I fail to catch your meaning, Arnold.”

“That she is being drugged in the night as well as the day.”

“If she is drugged at all,” corrected Mr. Tamlyn, shaking his head. “But I do not give in to your fancy yet, Arnold. All this must edify you, Johnny!”

Tamlyn spoke the words in a jesting sense, meaning of course that it had done nothing of the kind. He was wrong, if to edify means to interest. Hardly ever during my life had I been more excited.

“It is a frightful shame if any one is playing with Lady Jenkins,” I said to them. “She is as good-hearted an old lady as ever lived. And why should they do it? Where’s the motive?”

“There lies one of the difficulties—the motive,” observed Dr. Knox. “I cannot see any; any end to be obtained by it. No living being that I know of can have an interest in wishing for Lady Jenkins’s death or illness.”

“How is her money left?”

“A pertinent question, Johnny. I do not expect any one could answer it, excepting herself and Belford, the lawyer. I suppose her relatives, all the nephews and nieces, will inherit it: and they are not about her, you see, and cannot be dosing her. No; the motive is to me a complete mystery. Meanwhile, Johnny, keep your ears and eyes open when you are up there; there’s no telling what chance word or look may be dropped that might serve to give you a clue: and keep your mouth shut.”

I laughed.

“If I could put aside my patients for a week, and invent some excuse for taking up my abode at Jenkins House, I know I should soon find out all the mystery,” went on Dr. Knox.

“Arnold, why not take Madame St. Vincent into your confidence?”

Dr. Knox turned quickly round at the words to face his senior partner. He held up his finger warningly.

“Things are not ripe for it,” he said. “Let me get, or try to get, a little more inkling into matters than I have at present, as touching the domestic economy at Jenkins House. I may have to do as you say, later: but women are only chattering magpies; marplots, often with the best intentions; and Madame St. Vincent may be no exception.”

“Will you please come to tea?” interrupted Janet, opening the door.

Miss Cattledon, in a sea-green silk gown that I’m sure I had seen many times before, and the velvet on her thin throat, and a bow of lace on her head, shook hands with Mr. Tamlyn and Dr. Knox, and we sat down to tea. Little Arnold, standing by his mother in his plaid frock and white drawers (for the time to dress little children as men had not come in then by many a year), had a piece of bread-and-butter given to him. While he was eating it, the nurse appeared.

“Are you ready, Master Arnold? It is quite bedtime.”

“Yes, he is ready, Harriet; and he has been very good,” spoke Janet. And the little fellow went contentedly off without a word.

Miss Cattledon, stirring her tea at the moment, put the spoon down to look at the nurse, staring at her as if she had never seen a nurse before.

“That’s not Lettice Lane,” she observed sententiously, as the door closed on Harriet. “Where is Lettice Lane?”

“She has left, Aunt Jemima.”

If a look could have withered Janet, Cattledon’s was severe enough to do it. But the displeasure was meant for Lettice, not for Janet.

“What business had she to leave? Did she misbehave herself?”

“She stayed with me only two months,” said Janet. “And she left because she still continued poorly, and the two children were rather too much for her. The baby was cutting her teeth, which disturbed Lettice at night; and I and Arnold both thought we ought to have some one stronger.”

“Did you give her warning?” asked Cattledon, who was looking her very grimmest at thought of the absent Lettice; “or did she give it you?”

Janet laughed presently. “I think it was a sort of mutual warning, Aunt Jemima. Lettice acknowledged to me that she was hardly equal to the care of the children; and I told her I thought she was not. We found her another place.”

“A rolling-stone gathers no moss,” commented Cattledon. “Lettice Lane changes her places too often.”

“She stayed some time with Miss Deveen, Aunt Jemima. And she likes her present place. She gets very good wages, better than she had with me, and helps to keep her mother.”

“What may her duties be? Is she housemaid again?”

“She is lady’s-maid to Lady Jenkins, an old lady who lives up the London Road. Lettice has grown much stronger since she went there. Why, what do you think, Aunt Jemima?” added Janet, laughing, “Lettice has actually been to Paris. Lady Jenkins went there just after engaging Lettice, and took her.”

Miss Cattledon tossed her head. “Much good that would do Lettice Lane! Only fill her up with worse conceits than ever. I wonder she is not yet off to Australia! She used always to be talking of it.”

“You don’t appear to like Lettice Lane, ma’am,” smiled old Tamlyn.

“No, I do not, sir. Lettice Lane first became known to me under unfavourable circumstances, and I have not liked her since.”

“Indeed! What were they?”

“Some of Miss Deveen’s jewels disappeared—were stolen; and Lettice Lane was suspected. It turned out later that she was not guilty; but I could not get over my dislike to her. We cannot help our likes and dislikes, which often come to us without rhyme or reason,” acknowledged Miss Cattledon, “and I admit that I am perhaps too persistent in mine.”

Not a soul present, myself excepted, had ever heard about the loss of the emeralds: and somehow I felt sorry that Cattledon had spoken of it. Not that she did it in ill-nature—I give her that due. Questions were immediately poured out, and she had to give the full history.

The story interested them all, Dr. Knox especially.

“And who did take the jewels?” he asked.

But Cattledon could not enlighten him, for Miss Deveen had not betrayed Sophie Chalk, even to her.

“I don’t know who it was,” tartly confessed Cattledon, the point being a sore one with her. “Miss Deveen promised, I believe, to screen the thief; and did so.”

“Perhaps it was really Lettice Lane?”

“I believe not. I am sure not. It was a lady, Miss Deveen told me that much. No; of that disgraceful act Lettice Lane was innocent: but I should never be surprised to hear of her falling into trouble. She is capable of it.”

“Of poisoning somebody, perhaps?” spoke Dr. Knox.

“Yes,” acquiesced Cattledon, grimly.

How prejudiced she was against Lettice Lane! But she had given this last answer only in the same jesting spirit in which it appeared to have been put, not really meaning it.

“To be wrongly suspected, as poor Lettice Lane was, ought to make people all the more considerate to her,” remarked Janet, her thoughts no doubt reverting to the time when she herself was falsely suspected—and accused.

“True, my dear,” answered old Tamlyn. “Poor Lettice must have had her troubles.”

“And she has had her faults,” retorted Cattledon.

But this story had made an impression on Dr. Knox that Cattledon never suspected, never intended. He took up the idea that Lettice Lane was guilty. Going into Mr. Tamlyn’s sitting-room for “Martin Chuzzlewit,” when tea was over, I found his hand on my shoulder. He had silently followed me.

“Johnny Ludlow,” he said, looking down into my eyes in the dim room, which was only lighted by the dim fire, “I don’t like this that I have heard of Lettice Lane.”

And the next to come in was Tamlyn. Closing the door, he walked up to the hearthrug where we stood, and stirred the fire into a blaze.

“I am telling Johnny Ludlow that this story of Miss Deveen’s emeralds has made an unfavourable impression on me,” quoth Dr. Knox to him. “It does not appear to me to be at all clear that Lettice Lane did not take them; and that Miss Deveen, in her benevolence, screened her from the consequences.”

“But, indeed——” I was beginning, when Dr. Knox stopped me.

“A moment, Johnny. I was about to add that a woman who is capable of one crime can sometimes be capable of another; and I should not be surprised if it is Lettice Lane who is tampering with Lady Jenkins.”

“But,” I repeated, “Lettice Lane did not take the jewels. She knew nothing about it. She was perfectly innocent.”

“You cannot answer for it, Johnny.”

“Yes, I can; and do. I know who did take them.”

“You know, Johnny Ludlow?” cried old Tamlyn, while Dr. Knox looked at me in silence.

“I helped Miss Deveen to find it out. At least, she had me with her during the progress of the discovery. It was a lady who took the jewels—as Miss Cattledon told you. She fainted away when it was brought home to her, and fell on my shoulder.”

I believe they hardly knew whether to give me credit or not. Of course it did sound strange that I, young Johnny Ludlow, should have been entrusted by Miss Deveen with a secret she would not disclose even to her many years’ companion and friend, Jemima Cattledon.

“Who was it, then, Johnny?” began Mr. Tamlyn.

“I should not like to tell, sir. I do not think it would be right to tell. For the young lady’s own sake, Miss Deveen hushed the matter up, hoping it would be a warning to her in future. And I dare say it has been.”

“Young, was she?”

“Yes. She has married since then. I could not, in honour, tell you her name.”

“Well, I suppose we must believe you, Johnny,” said Dr. Knox, making the admission unwillingly. “Lettice Lane did get fingering the jewels, it appears; you admit that.”

“But she did not take them. It was—another.” And, cautiously choosing my words, so as not to say anything that could direct suspicion to Sophie Chalk—whose name most likely they had never heard in their lives—I gave them an outline of the way in which Miss Deveen had traced the matter out. The blaze lighted up Mr. Tamlyn’s grey face as I told it.

“You perceive that it could not have been Lettice Lane, Dr. Knox,” I said, in conclusion. “I am sorry Miss Cattledon should have spoken against her.”

“Yes, I perceive Lettice could not have been guilty of stealing the jewels,” answered Dr. Knox. “Nevertheless, a somewhat unfavourable impression of the girl has been made upon me, and I shall look a little after her. Why does she want to emigrate to Australia?”

“Only because two of her brothers are there. I dare say it is all idle talk—that she will never go.”

They said no more to me. I took up my book and quitted the room, leaving them to talk it out between themselves.

II.

Mr. Tamlyn might be clever in medicine; he certainly was not in diplomacy. Dr. Knox had particularly impressed upon him the desirability of keeping their suspicion a secret for the present, even from Madame St. Vincent; yet the first use old Tamlyn made of his liberty was to disclose it to her.

Tossed about in the conflict of doubts and suspicions that kept arising in his mind, Mr. Tamlyn, from the night I have just told you of, was more uneasy than a fish out of water, his opinion constantly vacillating. “You must be mistaken, Arnold; I feel sure there’s nothing wrong going on,” he would say to his junior partner one minute; and, the next minute, decide that it was going on, and that its perpetrator must be Lettice Lane.

The uneasiness took him abroad earlier than he would otherwise have gone. A slight access of fever attacked him the day after the subject had been broached—which fever he had no doubt worried himself into. In the ordinary course of things he would have stayed at home for a week after that: but he now went out on the third day.

“I will walk,” he decided, looking up at the sunshine. “It will do me good. What lovely weather we are having.”

Betaking himself through the streets to the London Road, he reached Jenkins House. The door stood open; and the doctor, almost as much at home in the house as Lady Jenkins herself, walked in without knocking.

The dining-room, where they mostly sat in the morning, was empty; the drawing-room was empty; and Mr. Tamlyn went on to a third room, that opened to the garden at the back with glass-doors.

“Any one here? or is the house gone a-maying?” cried the surgeon as he entered and came suddenly upon a group of three people, all upon their knees before a pile of old music—Madame St. Vincent, Mina Knox, and Captain Collinson. Two of them got up, laughing. Mina remained where she was.

“We are searching for a manuscript song that is missing,” explained madame, as she gave her hand to the doctor. “Mina feels sure she left it here; but I do not remember to have seen it.”

“It was not mine,” added Mina, looking round at the doctor in her pretty, gentle way. “Caroline Parker lent it to me, and she has sent for it twice.”

“I hope you’ll find it, my dear.”

“I must have left it here,” continued Mina, as she rapidly turned over the sheets. “I was singing it yesterday afternoon, you remember,” she added, glancing up at the captain. “It was while you were upstairs with Lady Jenkins, Madame St. Vincent.”

She came to the end of the pile of music, but could not find the song. Putting it all on a side-table, Mina said a general good-bye, escaped by the glass-doors, and ran home by the little gate that divided the two gardens.

Captain Collinson left next. Perhaps he and Mina had both a sense of being de trop when the doctor was there. Waiting to exchange a few words with Mr. Tamlyn, and bidding Madame St. Vincent an adieu that had more of formality in it than friendship, the captain bowed himself out, taking his tasselled cane with him, madame ringing for one of the men-servants to attend him to the hall-door. Tasselled canes were the fashion then.

“They do not make a practice of meeting here, do they?” began old Tamlyn, when the captain was beyond hearing.

“Who? What?” asked Madame St. Vincent.

“The captain and little Mina Knox.”

For a minute or two it appeared that madame could not catch his meaning. She looked at him in perplexity.

“I fail to understand you, dear Mr. Tamlyn.”

“The captain is a very attractive man, no doubt; a good match, I dare say, and all that: but still we should not like poor little Mina to be whirled off to India by him. I asked if they often met here.”

“Whirled off to India?” repeated madame, in astonishment. “Little Mina? By him? In what capacity?”

“As his wife.”

“But—dear me!—what can have put such an idea into your head, my good sir? Mina is a mere child.”

“Old enough to take up foolish notions,” quoth the doctor, quaintly; “especially if they are put into it by a be-whiskered grenadier, such as he. I hope he is not doing it! I hope you do not give them opportunities of meeting here!”

Madame seemed quite taken aback at the implication. Her voice had a sound of tears in it.

“Do you suppose I could be capable of such a thing, sir? I did think you had a better opinion of me. Such a child as Mina! We were both on our knees, looking for the song, when Captain Collinson came in; and he must needs go down on his great stupid knees too. He but called to inquire after Lady Jenkins.”

“Very thoughtful of him, of course. He is often up here, I fancy; at the next house, if not at this.”

“Certainly not often at this. He calls on Lady Jenkins occasionally, and she likes it. I don’t encourage him. He may be a brave soldier, and a man of wealth and family, and everything else that’s desirable; but he is no especial favourite of mine.”

“Well, Sam Jenkins has an idea that he would like to get making love to Mina. Sam was laughing about it in the surgery last night with Johnny Ludlow, and I happened to overhear him. Sam thinks they meet here, as well as next door: and you heard Mina say just now that she was singing to him here yesterday afternoon. Stay, my dear lady, don’t be put out. I am sure you have thought it no harm, have been innocent of all suspicion of it. Mistaken, you tell me? Well, it may be I am. Mina is but a child, as you observe, and—and perhaps Sam was only jesting. How is our patient to-day?”

“Pretty well. Just a little drowsy.”

“In bed, or up?”

“Oh, up.”

“Will you tell her I am here?”

Madame St. Vincent, her plumage somewhat ruffled, betook herself to the floor above, Mr. Tamlyn following. Lady Jenkins, in a loose gown of blue quilted silk and a cap with yellow roses in it, sat at the window, nodding.

“Well,” said he, sitting down by her and taking her hand, “and how do you feel to-day?”

She opened her eyes and smiled at him. Better, she thought: oh yes, certainly better.

“You are sleepy.”

“Rather so. Getting up tired me.”

“Are you not going for a drive to-day? It would do you good.”

“I don’t know. Ask Patty. Patty, are we going out to-day?”

The utter helplessness of mind and body which appeared to be upon her as she thus appealed to another, Mr. Tamlyn had rarely seen equalled. Even while listening to Madame St. Vincent’s answer—that they would go if she felt strong enough—her heavy eyelids closed again. In a minute or two she was in a sound sleep. Tamlyn threw caution and Dr. Knox’s injunction to the winds, and spoke on the moment’s impulse to Madame St. Vincent.

“You see,” he observed, pointing to the sleeping face.

“She is only dozing off again.”

“Only! My dear, good lady, this perpetual, stupid, lethargic sleepiness is not natural. You are young, perhaps inexperienced, or you would know it to be not so.”

“I scarcely think it altogether unnatural,” softly dissented madame, with deprecation. “She has really been very poorly.”

“But not sufficiently so to induce this helplessness. It has been upon her for months, and is gaining ground.”

“She is seventy years of age, remember.”

“I know that. But people far older than that are not as she is without some cause: either of natural illness, or—or—something else. Step here a minute, my dear.”

Old Tamlyn walked rapidly to the other window, and stood there talking in low tones, his eyes fixed on Madame St. Vincent, his hand, in his eagerness, touching her shoulder.

“Knox thinks, and has imparted his opinion to me—ay, and his doubts also—that something is being given to her.”

“That something is being given to her!” echoed Madame St. Vincent, her face flushing with surprise. “Given to her in what way?”

“Or else that she is herself taking it. But I, who have known her longer than Knox has, feel certain that she is not one to do anything of the sort. Besides, you would have found it out long ago.”

“I protest I do not understand you,” spoke madame, earnestly. “What is it that she could take? She has taken the medicine that comes from your surgery. She has taken nothing else.”

“Knox thinks she is being drugged.”

“Drugged! Lady Jenkins drugged? How, drugged? What with? What for? Who would drug her?”

“There it is; who would do it?” said the old doctor, interrupting the torrent of words poured forth in surprise. “I confess I think the symptoms point to it. But I don’t see how it could be accomplished and you not detect it, considering that you are so much with her.”

“Why, I hardly ever leave her, day or night,” cried madame. “My bedroom, as you know, is next to hers, and I sleep with the intervening door open. There is no more chance, sir, that she could be drugged than that I could be.”

“When Knox first spoke of it to me I was pretty nearly startled out of my senses,” went on Tamlyn. “For I caught up a worse notion than he meant to convey—that she was being systematically poisoned.”

A dark, vivid, resentful crimson dyed madame’s face. The suggestion seemed to be a reproof on her vigilance.

“Poisoned!” she repeated in angry indignation. “How dare Dr. Knox suggest such a thing?”

“My dear, he did not suggest it against you. He and I both look upon you as her best safeguard. It is your being with her, that gives us some sort of security: and it is your watchfulness we shall have to look to for detection.”

“Poisoned!” reiterated madame, unable to get over the ugly word. “I think Dr. Knox ought to be made to answer for so wicked a suspicion.”

“Knox did not mean to go so far as that: it was my misapprehension. But he feels perfectly convinced that she is being tampered with. In short, drugged.”

“It is not possible,” reasoned madame. “It could not be done without my knowledge. Indeed, sir, you may dismiss all idea of the kind from your mind; you and Dr. Knox also. I assure you that such a thing would be simply impracticable.”

Mr. Tamlyn shook his head. “Any one who sets to work to commit a crime by degrees, usually possesses a large share of innate cunning—more than enough to deceive lookers-on,” he remarked. “I can understand how thoroughly repulsive this idea is to you, my good lady; that your mind shrinks from admitting it; but I wish you would, just for argument’s sake, allow its possibility.”

But madame was harder than adamant. Old Tamlyn saw what it was—that she took this accusation, and would take it, as a reflection on her care.

“Who is there, amidst us all, that would attempt to injure Lady Jenkins?” she asked. “The household consists only of myself and the servants. They would not seek to harm their mistress.”

“Not so sure; not so sure. It is amidst those servants that we must look for the culprit. Dr. Knox thinks so, and so do I.”

Madame’s face of astonishment was too genuine to be doubted. She feebly lifted her hands in disbelief. To suspect the servants seemed, to her, as ridiculous as the suspicion itself.

“Her maid, Lettice, and the housemaid, Sarah, are the only two servants who approach her when she is ill, sir: Sarah but very little. Both of them are kind-hearted young women.”

Mr. Tamlyn coughed. Whether he would have gone on to impart his doubt of Lettice cannot be known. During the slight silence Lettice herself entered the room with her mistress’s medicine. A quick, dark-eyed young woman, in a light print gown.

The stir aroused Lady Jenkins. Madame St. Vincent measured out the physic, and was handing it to the patient, when Mr. Tamlyn seized the wine-glass.

“It’s all right,” he observed, after smelling and tasting, speaking apparently to himself: and Lady Jenkins took it.

“That is the young woman you must especially watch,” whispered Mr. Tamlyn, as Lettice retired with her waiter.

“What! Lettice?” exclaimed madame, opening her eyes.

“Yes; I should advise you to do so. She is the only one who is much about her mistress,” he added, as if he would account for the advice. “Watch her.”

Leaving madame at the window to digest the mandate and to get over her astonishment, he sat down by Lady Jenkins again, and began talking of this and that: the fineness of the weather, the gossip passing in the town.

“What do you take?” he asked abruptly.

“Take?” she repeated. “What is it that I take, Patty?” appealing to her companion.

“Nay, but I want you to tell me yourself,” hastily interposed the doctor. “Don’t trouble madame.”

“But I don’t know that I can recollect.”

“Oh yes, you can. The effort to do so will do you good—wake you out of this stupid sleepiness. Take yesterday: what did you have for breakfast?”

“Yesterday? Well, I think they brought me a poached egg.”

“And a very good thing, too. What did you drink with it?”

“Tea. I always take tea.”

“Who makes it?”

“I do,” said madame, turning her head to Mr. Tamlyn with a meaning smile. “I take my own tea from the same tea-pot.”

“Good. What did you take after that, Lady Jenkins?”

“I dare say I had some beef-tea at eleven. Did I, Patty? I generally do have it.”

“Yes, dear Lady Jenkins; and delicious beef-tea it is, and it does you good. I should like Mr. Tamlyn to take a cup of it.”

“I don’t mind if I do.”

Perhaps the answer was unexpected: but Madame St. Vincent rang the bell and ordered up a cup of the beef-tea. The beef-tea proved to be “all right,” as he had observed of the medicine. Meanwhile he had continued his questions to his patient.

She had eaten some chicken for dinner, and a little sweetbread for supper. There had been interludes of refreshment: an egg beaten up with milk, a cup of tea and bread-and-butter, and so on.

“You don’t starve her,” laughed Mr. Tamlyn.

“No, indeed,” warmly replied madame. “I do what I can to nourish her.”

“What do you take to drink?” continued the doctor.

“Nothing to speak of,” interposed madame. “A drop of cold brandy-and-water with her dinner.”

“Patty thinks it is better for me than wine,” put in Lady Jenkins.

“I don’t know but it is. You don’t take too much of it?”

Lady Jenkins paused. “Patty knows. Do I take too much, Patty?”

Patty was smiling, amused at the very idea. “I measure one table-spoonful of brandy into a tumbler and put three or four table-spoonfuls of water to it. If you think that is too much brandy, Mr. Tamlyn, I will put less.”

“Oh, nonsense,” said old Tamlyn. “It’s hardly enough.”

“She has the same with her supper,” concluded madame.

Well, old Tamlyn could make nothing of his suspicions. And he came home from Jenkins House and told Knox he thought they must be both mistaken.

“Why did you speak of it to madame?” asked Dr. Knox. “We agreed to be silent for a short time.”

“I don’t see why she should not be told, Arnold. She is straightforward as the day—and Lettice Lane seems so, too. I tasted the beef-tea they gave her—took a cup of it, in fact—and I tasted the physic. Madame says it is impossible that anything in the shape of drugs is being given to her; and upon my word I think so too.”

“All the same, I wish you had not spoken.”

And a little time went on.

III.

The soirÉe to-night was at Rose Villa; and Mrs. Knox, attired in a striped gauze dress and the jangling ornaments she favoured, stood to receive her guests. Beads on her thin brown neck, beads on her sharp brown wrists, beads in her ears, and beads dropping from her waist. She looked all beads. They were drab beads to-night, each resting in a little cup of gold. Janet and Miss Cattledon went up in the brougham, the latter more stiffly ungracious than usual, for she still resented Mrs. Knox’s former behaviour to Janet. I walked.

“Where can the people from next door be?” wondered Mrs. Knox, as the time went on and Lady Jenkins did not appear.

For Lady Jenkins went abroad again. In a day or two after Mr. Tamlyn’s interview with her, Lefford had the pleasure of seeing her red-wheeled carriage whirling about the streets, herself and her companion within it. Old Tamlyn said she was getting strong. Dr. Knox said nothing; but he kept his eyes open.

“I hope she is not taken ill again? I hope she is not too drowsy to come!” reiterated Mrs. Knox. “Sometimes madame can’t rouse her up from these sleepy fits, do what she will.”

Lady Jenkins was the great card of the soirÉe, and Mrs. Knox grew cross. Captain Collinson had not come either. She drew me aside.

“Johnny Ludlow, I wish you would step into the next door and see whether anything has happened. Do you mind it? So strange that Madame St. Vincent does not send or come.”

I did not mind it at all. I rather liked the expedition, and passed out of the noisy and crowded room to the lovely, warm night-air. The sky was clear; the moon radiant.

I was no longer on ceremony at Jenkins House, having been up to it pretty often with Dan or Sam, and on my own score. Lady Jenkins had been pleased to take a fancy to me, had graciously invited me to some drives in her red-wheeled carriage, she dozing at my side pretty nearly all the time. I could not help being struck with the utter abnegation of will she displayed. It was next door to imbecility.

“Patty, Johnny Ludlow would like to go that way, I think, to-day may we?” she would say. “Must we turn back already, Patty?—it has been such a short drive.” Thus she deferred to Madame St. Vincent in all things, small and great: if she had a will or choice of her own, it seemed that she never thought of exercising it. Day after day she would say the drives were short: and very short indeed they were made, upon some plea or other, when I made a third in the carriage. “I am so afraid of fatigue for her,” madame whispered to me one day, when she seemed especially anxious.

“But you take a much longer drive, when she and you are alone,” I answered, that fact having struck me. “What difference does my being in the carriage make?—are you afraid of fatigue for the horses as well?” At which suggestion madame burst out laughing.

“When I am alone with her I take care not to talk,” she explained; “but when three of us are here there’s sure to be talking going on, and it cannot fail to weary her.”

Of course that was madame’s opinion: but my impression was that, let us talk as much as we would, in a high key or a low one, that poor nodding woman neither heard nor heeded it.

“Don’t you think you are fidgety about it, madame?”

“Well, perhaps I am,” she answered. “I assure you, Lady Jenkins is an anxious charge to me.”

Therefore, being quite at home now at Jenkins House (to return to the evening and the soirÉe I was telling of), I ran in the nearest way to do Mrs. Knox’s behest. That was through the two back gardens, by the intervening little gate. I knocked at the glass-doors of what was called the garden-room, in which shone a light behind the curtains, and went straight in. Sitting near each other, conversing with an eager look on their faces, and both got up for Mrs. Knox’s soirÉe, were Captain Collinson and Madame St. Vincent.

“Mr. Ludlow!” she exclaimed. “How you startled me!”

“I beg your pardon for entering so abruptly. Mrs. Knox asked me to run in and see whether anything was the matter, and I came the shortest way. She has been expecting you for some time.”

“Nothing is the matter,” shortly replied madame, who seemed more put out than the occasion called for: she thought me rude, I suppose. “Lady Jenkins is not ready; that is all. She may be half-an-hour yet.”

“Half-an-hour! I won’t wait longer, then,” said Captain Collinson, catching up his crush hat. “I do trust she has not taken another chill. Au revoir, madame.”

With a nod to me, he made his exit by the way I had entered. The same peculiarity struck me now that I had observed before: whenever I went into a place, be it Jenkins House or Rose Villa, the gallant captain immediately quitted it.

“Do I frighten Captain Collinson away?” I said to madame on the spur of the moment.

“You frighten him! Why should you?”

“I don’t know why. If he happens to be here when I come in, he gets up and goes away. Did you never notice it? It is the same at Mrs. Knox’s. It was the same once at Mrs. Hampshire’s.”

Madame laughed. “Perhaps he is shy,” said she, jestingly.

“A man who has travelled to India and back must have rubbed his shyness off, one would think. I wish I knew where I had met him before!—if I have met him. Every now and again his face seems to strike on a chord of my memory.”

“It is a handsome face,” remarked madame.

“Pretty well. As much as can be seen of it. He has hair enough for a Russian bear or a wild Indian.”

“Have wild Indians a superabundance of hair?” asked she gravely.

I laughed. “Seriously speaking, though, Madame St. Vincent, I think I must have met him somewhere.”

“Seriously speaking, I don’t think that can be,” she answered; and her jesting tone had become serious. “I believe he has passed nearly all his life in India.”

“Just as you have passed yours in the South of France. And yet there is something in your face also familiar to me.”

“I should say you must be just a little fanciful on the subject of likenesses. Some people are.”

“I do not think so. If I am I did not know it. I——”

The inner door opened and Lady Jenkins appeared, becloaked and beshawled, with a great green hood over her head, and leaning on Lettice Lane. Madame got up and threw a mantle on her own shoulders.

“Dear Lady Jenkins, I was just coming to see for you. Captain Collinson called in to give you his arm, but he did not wait. And here’s Mr. Johnny Ludlow, sent in by Mrs. Knox to ask whether we are all dead.”

“Ay,” said Lady Jenkins, nodding to me as she sat down on the sofa: “but I should like a cup of tea before we start.”

“A cup of tea?”

“Ay; I’m thirsty. Let me have it, Patty.”

She spoke the last words in an imploring tone, as if Patty were her mistress. Madame threw off her mantle again, untied the green hood of her lady, and sent Lettice to make some tea.

“You had better go back and tell Mrs. Knox we are coming, though I’m sure I don’t know when it will be,” she said aside to me.

I did as I was told; and had passed through the garden-gate, when my eye fell upon Master Richard Knox. He was standing on the grass in the moonlight, near the clump of laurels, silently contorting his small form into cranks and angles, after the gleeful manner of Punch in the show when he has been giving his wife a beating. Knowing that agreeable youth could not keep himself out of mischief if he tried, I made up to him.

“Hush—sh—sh!” breathed he, silencing the question on my lips.

“What’s the sport, Dicky?”

“She’s with him there, beyond the laurels; they are walking round,” he whispered. “Oh my! such fun! I have been peeping at ’em. He has his arm round her waist.”

Sure enough, at that moment they came into view—Mina and Captain Collinson. Dicky drew back into the shade, as did I. And I, to my very great astonishment, trod upon somebody else’s feet, who made, so to say, one of the laurels.

“It’s only I,” breathed Sam Jenkins. “I’m on the watch as well as Dicky. It looks like a case of two loviers, does it not?”

The “loviers” were parting. Captain Collinson held her hand between both his to give her his final whisper. Then Mina tripped lightly over the grass and stole in at the glass-doors of the garden-room, while the captain stalked round to the front-entrance and boldly rang, making believe he had only then arrived.

“Oh my, my!” repeated the enraptured Dicky, “won’t I have the pull of her now! She’d better tell tales of me again!”

“Is it a case, think you?” asked Sam of me, as we slowly followed in the wake of Mina.

“It looks like it,” I answered.

Janet was singing one of her charming songs, as we stole in at the glass-doors: “Blow, blow, thou wintry wind:” just as she used to sing it in that house in the years gone by. Her voice had not lost its sweetness. Mina stood near the piano now, a thoughtful look upon her flushed face.

“Where did you and Dicky go just now, Sam?”

Sam turned short round at the query. Charlotte Knox, as she put it, carried suspicion in her low tone.

“Where did I and Dicky go?” repeated Sam, rather taken aback. “I—I only stepped out for a stroll in the moonlight. I don’t know anything about Dicky.”

“I saw Dicky run out to the garden first, and you went next,” persisted Charlotte, who was just as keen as steel. “Dick, what was there to see? I will give you two helpings of trifle at supper if you tell me.”

For two helpings of trifle Dick would have sold his birthright. “Such fun!” he cried, beginning to jump. “She was out there with the captain, Lotty: he came to the window here and beckoned to her: I saw him. I dodged them round and round the laurels, and I am pretty nearly sure he kissed her.”

“Who was?—who did?” But the indignant glow on Lotty’s face proved that she scarcely needed to put the question.

“That nasty Mina. She took and told that it was me who eat up the big bowl of raspberry cream in the larder to-day; and mother went and believed her!”

Charlotte Knox, her brow knit, her head held erect, walked away after giving us all a searching look apiece. “I, like Dicky, saw Collinson call her out, and I thought I might as well see what he wanted to be after,” Sam whispered to me. “I did not see Dicky at all, though, until he came into the laurels with you.”

“He is talking to her now,” I said, directing Sam’s attention to the captain.

“I wonder whether I ought to tell Dr. Knox?” resumed Sam. “What do you think, Johnny Ludlow? She is so young, and somehow I don’t trust him. Dan doesn’t, either.”

“Dan told me he did not.”

“Dan fancies he is after her money. It would be a temptation to some people,—seven thousand pounds. Yet he seems to have plenty of his own.”

“If he did marry her he could not touch the money for three or four years to come.”

“Oh, couldn’t he, though,” answered Sam, taking me up. “He could touch it next day.”

“I thought she did not come into it till she was of age, and that Dr. Knox was trustee.”

“That’s only in case she does not marry. If she marries it goes to her at once. Here comes Aunt Jenkins!”

The old lady, as spruce as you please, in a satin gown, was shaking hands with Mrs. Knox. But she looked half silly: and, may I never be believed again, if she did not begin to nod directly she sat down.

“Do you hail from India? as the Americans phrase it,” I suddenly ask of Captain Collinson, when chance pinned us together in a corner of the supper-room, and he could not extricate himself.

“Hail from India!” he repeated. “Was I born there, I conclude you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Not exactly. I went there, a child, with my father and mother. And, except for a few years during my teens, when I was home for education, I have been in India ever since. Why do you ask?”

“For no particular reason. I was telling Madame St. Vincent this evening that it seemed to me I had seen you before; but I suppose it could not be. Shall you be going back soon?”

“I am not sure. Possibly in the autumn, when my leave will expire: not till next year if I can get my leave extended. I shall soon be quitting Lefford.”

“Shall you?”

“Must do it. I have to make my bow at a levÉe; and I must be in town for other things as well. I should like to enjoy a little of the season there: it may be years before the opportunity falls to my lot again. Then I have some money to invest: I think of buying an estate. Oh, I have all sorts of business to attend to, once I am in London.”

“Where’s the use of buying an estate if you are to live in India?”

“I don’t intend to live in India always,” he answered, with a laugh. “I shall quit the service as soon as ever I can, and settle down comfortably in the old country. A home of my own will be of use to me then.”

Now it was that very laugh of Captain Collinson’s that seemed more familiar to me than all the rest of him. That I had heard it before, ay, and heard it often, I felt sure. At least, I should have felt sure but for its seeming impossibility.

“You are from Gloucestershire, I think I have heard,” he observed to me.

“No; from Worcestershire.”

“Worcestershire? That’s a nice county, I believe. Are not the Malvern Hills situated in it?”

“Yes. They are eight miles from Worcester.”

“I should like to see them. I must see them before I go back. And Worcester is famous for—what is it?—china?—yes, china. And for its cathedral, I believe. I shall get a day or two there if I can. I can do Malvern at the same time.”

“Captain Collinson, would you mind giving Lady Jenkins your arm?” cried Mrs. Knox at this juncture. “She is going home.”

“There is no necessity for Captain Collinson to disturb himself: I can take good care of Lady Jenkins,” hastily spoke Madame St. Vincent, in a tart tone, which the room could not mistake. Evidently she did not favour Captain Collinson.

But the captain had already pushed himself through the throng of people and taken the old lady in tow. The next minute I found myself close to Charlotte Knox, who was standing at the supper-table, with a plate of cold salmon before her.

“Are you a wild bear, Johnny Ludlow?” she asked me privately, under cover of the surrounding clatter.

“Not that I know of. Why?”

“Madame St. Vincent takes you for one.”

I laughed. “Has she told you so?”

“She has not told me: I guess it is some secret,” returned Charlotte, beginning upon the sandwiches. “I learnt it in a curious way.”

A vein of seriousness ran through her half-mocking tone; seriousness lay in her keen and candid eyes, lifted to mine.

“Yes, it was rather curious, the way it came to me: and perhaps on my part not altogether honourable. Early this morning, Johnny, before ten o’clock had struck, mamma made me go in and ask how Lady Jenkins was, and whether she would be able to come to-night. I ran in the nearest way, by the glass-doors, boisterously of course—mamma is always going on at me for that—and the breeze the doors made as I threw them open blew a piece of paper off the table. I stooped to pick it up, and saw it was a letter just begun in madame’s handwriting.”

“Well?”

“Well, my eyes fell on the few words written; but I declare that I read them heedlessly, not with any dishonourable intention; such a thought never entered my mind. ‘Dear Sissy,’ the letter began, ‘You must not come yet, for Johnny Ludlow is here, of all people in the world; it would not do for you and him to meet.’ That was all.”

“I suppose madame had been called away,” continued Charlotte, after a pause. “I put the paper on the table, and was going on into the passage, when I found the room-door locked: so I just came out again, ran round to the front-door and went in that way. Now if you are not a bear, Johnny, why should you frighten people?”

I did not answer. She had set me thinking.

“Madame St. Vincent had invited a sister from France to come and stay with her: she does just as she likes here, you know. It must be she who is not allowed to meet you. What is the mystery?”

“Who is talking about mystery?” exclaimed Caroline Parker; who, standing near, must have caught the word. “What is the mystery, Lotty?”

And Lotty, giving her some evasive reply, put down her fork and turned away.