d the decanter with water, and partly refilled it with the
contents of another tumbler previously secreted in the sideboard,
stopping rather short of the amount of wine returned from the butler's
room. He drank the remainder, washed the glass, and put a few drops of
whisky into it.

Carrying the other tumbler to an open window, he threw the medicated
wine into a drain under a water spout, and making assurance doubly
sure, douched the same locality with water; also, he rinsed this
second glass. He seemed to be rather pleased at his own thoroughness.

As Furneaux had said, Hilton Fenley was cold-blooded as a fish.

CHAPTER XIII

CLOSE QUARTERS

Human affairs are peculiarly dependent on the weather. It is not easy
to lay down a law governing this postulate, which, indeed, may be
scoffed at by the superficial reasoner, and the progression from cause
to effect is often obscured by contradictory facts. For instance, a
fine summer means a good harvest, much traveling, the prolongation of
holiday periods, a free circulation of money, and the consequent
enhanced prosperity and happiness of millions of men and women. But
there are more suicides in June and July than in December and January.
On the one hand, fine weather improves humanity's lot; on the other,
it depresses the individual.

Let the logician explain these curiously divergent issues as he may;
there can be no question that the quality of the night which closed a
day eventful beyond any other in the annals of Roxton exercised a
remarkable influence on the lives of five people. It was a perfect
night in June. There was no moon; the stars shone dimly through a
slight haze; but the sun had set late and would rise early, and his
complete disappearance followed so small a chord of the diurnal
circle that his light was never wholly absent. A gentle westerly
breeze was so zephyr-like that it hardly stirred the leaves of the
trees, but it wafted the scent of flowers and meadow land into open
windows, and was grateful alike to the just and the unjust.

Thus to romantic minds it was redolent of romance; and as Sylvia
Manning's room faced south and John Trenholme's faced north, and lay
nearly opposite each other, though separated by a rolling mile of
park, woodland, tillage and pasture, it is not altogether incredible
that those two, gazing out at the same hour, should bridge the void
with the eyes of the soul.

It was a night, too, that invited to the open.