eath.

Inside, he looked round the darkened room in angry amazement. It had been
wholly transformed. The open windows had been cleaned and curtained; the
oak floor shone as though it had been recently washed; there was a table
on which were medicine bottles and glasses, with a chair or two; while in
the centre of the room, carefully screened from light, was a white bed.
Upon it, a motionless form.

"Poor young fellow!" whispered the nurse, standing beside Melrose, her
kind face softening. "He has been conscious a little to-day--the doctor
is hopeful. But he has been very badly hurt."

Melrose surveyed him--the interloper!--who represented to him at that
moment one of those unexpected checks and annoyances in life, which
selfish men with strong wills cannot and do not attempt to bear. His
privacy, his habits, his freedom--all at the mercy of this white-faced
boy, these two intolerable women, and the still more intolerable doctor,
on whom he intended to inflect a stinging lesson! No doubt the whole
thing had been done by the wretched pill-man with a view to his own fees.
It was a plant!--an infamous conspiracy.

He came closer. Not a boy, after all. A young man of thirty--perhaps
more. The brow and head were covered with bandages; the eyes were closed;
the bloodless mouth hung slightly open, with a look of pain. The
comeliness of the dark, slightly bearded face was not entirely disguised
by the dressings in which the head was swathed; and the chest and arms,
from which the bedclothes had been folded back, were finely, though
sparely, moulded. Melrose, whose life was spent among artistic objects
was not insensible to the young man's good looks, as they were visible
even under his bandages and in the dim light, and for the first time he
felt a slight stir of pity.

He left the room, beckoning to the night nurse.

"What's his name?"

"We took some cards from his pocket. I think, sir, the doctor put them
here for you to see."

The nurse went to the hall table and brought one.

"Claude Faversham, 5 Temple Buildings, E.C."

"Some young loafer, pretending to be a barrister," said Melrose
contemptuously. "What's he doing here--in May? This is not the tourist
season. What business had he to be here at all? I have no doubt whatever
that he was drunk, otherwise why should he have had an accident? Nobody
else ever had an accident on that hill. Why should he, eh? Why should he?
And how the deuce are we to get at his relati