very tired, but very happy. She was seeing a new world, a
world the like of which had never been revealed to her, and though she
could have slept, and her head did nod in the car, she roused herself to
talk it all over again with the sympathetic Jean.

Mrs. Cole-Mortimer retired early. Mr. Briggerland had gone up to bed the
moment he returned, and Lydia would have been glad to have ended her
conversation; since her head reeled with weariness, but Jean was very
talkative, until----

"My dear, if I don't go to bed I shall sleep on the table," smiled
Lydia, rising and suppressing a yawn.

"I'm so sorry," said the penitent Jean.

She accompanied the girl upstairs, her arm about her waist, and left her
at the door of her dressing-room.

A maid had laid out her night things on a big settee (a little to
Lydia's surprise) and she undressed quickly.

She opened the door of her bedroom, her hand was on a switch, when she
was conscious of a faint and not unpleasant odour. It was a clean,
pungent smell. "Disinfectant," said her brain mechanically. She turned
on the light, wondering where it came from. And then as she crossed the
room she came in sight of her bed and stopped, for it was saturated with
water--water that dropped from the hanging coverlet, and made little
pools on the floor. From the head of the bed to the foot there was not
one dry place. Whosoever had done the work was thorough. Blankets,
sheets, pillows were soddened, and from the soaked mass came a faint
acrid aroma which she recognised, even before she saw on the floor an
empty bottle labelled "Peroxide of Hydrogen."

She could only stand and stare. It was too late to arouse the household,
and she remembered that there was a very comfortable settee in the
dressing-room with a rug and a pillow, and she went back.

A few minutes later she was fast asleep. Not so Miss Briggerland, who
was sitting up in bed, a cigarette between her lips, a heavy volume on
her knees, reading:

"Such malignant cases are almost without exception rapidly fatal,
sometimes so early that no sign of the characteristic symptoms appear at
all," she read and, dropping the book on the floor, extinguished her
cigarette on an alabaster tray, and settled herself to sleep. She was
dozing when she remembered that she had forgotten to say her prayers.

"Oh, damn!" said Jean, getting out reluctantly to kneel on the cold
floor by the side of the bed.

Chapter XIX

Her maid woke Jea