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.

For some reason I hesitated.

"He says so," I replied cautiously. "At any rate, he is much better."

"Yes, I can see that. But he is still in a very nervous condition."

"Ah," I said, "that is only--only at certain times."

As we went together from room to room I forgot everything except the
fact of her presence. Never was beauty so powerful as hers; never was
the power of beauty used so artlessly, with such a complete
unconsciousness. I began gloomily to speculate on the chances of her
ultimately marrying Alresca, and a remark from her awoke me from my
abstraction. We were nearing the top of the house.

"It is all familiar to me, in a way," she said.

"Why, you said the same down-stairs. Have you been here before?"

"Never, to my knowledge."

We were traversing a long, broad passage side by side. Suddenly I
tripped over an unexpected single stair, and nearly fell. Rosa,
however, had allowed for it.

"I didn't see that step," I said.

"Nor I," she answered, "but I knew, somehow, that it was there. It is
very strange and uncanny, and I shall insist on an explanation from
Alresca." She gave a forced laugh