and--well, I detest anything
like subterfuge, and I said it out without thinking, "Why, you're
reading French, Arthur!" He turned deathly white but made no answer.'

'And can't you even confide to us the title, Sheila?' sighed Mrs Lovat
reproachfully.

'Wait a minute,' said Sheila; 'you shall make as much fun of the thing
as you like, Bettie, when I've finished. I don't know why, but that
peculiar, stealthy look haunted me. "Why French?" I kept asking myself.
"Why French?" Arthur hasn't opened a French book for years. He doesn't
even approve of the entente. His argument was that we ought to be
friends with the Germans because they are more hostile. Never mind. When
Ada came back the next evening and said he was out, I came the following
morning--by myself--and knocked. No one answered, and I let myself in.
His bed had not been slept in. There were candles and matches all over
the house--one even burnt nearly to the stick on the floor in the corner
of the drawing-room. I suppose it was foolish, but I was alone, and just
that, somehow, horrified me. It seemed to point to such a peculiar state
of mind. I hesitated; what was the use of looking further? Yet something
seemed to say to me--and it was surely providential--"Go downstairs!"
And there in the breakfast-room the first thing I saw on the table
was this book--a dingy, ragged, bleared, patched-up, oh, a horrible,
a loathsome little book (and I have read bits too here and there);
and beside it was my own little school dictionary, my own child's 'She
looked up sharply. 'What was that? Did anybody call?'

'Nobody I heard,' said Danton, staring stonily round.

'It may have been the passing of the wind,' suggested Mr Craik, after a
pause.

'Peep between the blinds, Mr Craik; it may be poor Mr Bethany
confronting Pneumonia in the porch.'

'There's no one there, Mrs Lovat,' said the curate, returning softly
from his errand. 'Please continue your--your narrative, Mrs Lawford.'

'We are panting for the "devil," my dear.'

'Well, I sat down and, very much against my inclination, turned over the
pages. It was full of the most revolting confessions and trials, so
far as I could see. In fact, I think the book was merely an amateur
collection of--of horrors. And the faces, the portraits! Well, then, can
you imagine my feelings when towards the end of the book about thirty
pages from the end, I came upon this--gloating up at me from the table
in my house before my very eyes?