ere, even if I were to stand aside while the game was being
played, I could not believe that the scheming of Louis and the
acquiescence of Felicia went for the same thing, and I had an
uncomfortable but a very persistent conviction to the effect that she
was being deceived. Everything from her point of view seemed
reasonable enough. What she had told me, even, seemed almost to
preclude the fear of any wrong-doing. Yet I could not escape from the
conviction of it. Some way or other there was trouble brewing, either
between Delora and Louis, or Delora and the arbiters of right and
wrong. In the end I wrote to no one. I determined to go down alone, to
shoot zealously from early in the morning till late at night, but to
have no house-party at Feltham,--to invite a few of the neighbors, and
to be free myself to depart for London any time, at a moment's notice.
It would come! somehow or other I felt sure of it. I should receive a
summons from her, and I must be prepared at any moment to come to her
aid.

I went into the club after I had left Claridge's, and stayed playing
bridge till unusually late. It was early in the morning when I reached
the Milan, and the hotel had that dimly lit, somewhat sepulchral
appearance which seems to possess a large building at that hour in the
morning. As I stood for a moment inside the main doors, four men
stepped out of the lift on my right, carrying a long wooden chest.
They slunk away into the shadows on tiptoe. I watched them curiously.

"What is that?" I asked the reception clerk who was on duty.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"It was a man who died here the day before yesterday," he whispered in
my ear.

"Died here?" I repeated. "Why are they taking his coffin down at such
an hour?"

"It is always done," the man assured me. "In hotels such as this,
where all is life and gayety, our clients do not care to be reminded
of such an ugly thing as death. Half the people on that floor would
have left if they had known that the dead body of a man has been lying
there. We keep these things very secret. The coffin has been taken to
the undertaker's. The funeral will be from there."

"Who is the man?" I asked. "Had he been ill long?"

The clerk shook his head.

"He was a Frenchman," he said; "Bartot was his name. He had an
apoplectic stroke in the cafe one day last week, and since then
complications set in."

I turned away with a little shiver. It was not pleasant to reflect
upon--this m