, if it were necessary."

"That is not necessary. You can take the night mail _via_ Dieppe and
Newhaven. It leaves Paris at 9.50. Give yourself an hour to get from
station to station. Any time, therefore, this evening before seven
o'clock will do perfectly well. You will ask his lordship for any
letters or messages he may have."

"Yes, sir," Fanny replied. "With your permission, sir, I will go at
once, so as to get a whole day in Paris."

"As you please, as you please," said the doctor, wondering why she
wanted a day in Paris; but it could have nothing to do with his sick
man. He left the room, promising to see the Dane again in an hour or
two, and took up a position at the garden gate through which the nurse
must pass. In about half an hour she walked down the path carrying her
box. The doctor opened the gate for her.

"Good-bye, Fanny," he said. "Again, many thanks for your care and your
watchfulness--especially the latter. I am very glad," he said, with
what he meant for the sweetest smile, but it looked like a grin, "that
it has been rewarded in such a way as you hardly perhaps expected."

"Thank you, sir," said the girl. "The man is nearly well now, and can
do without me very well indeed."

"The box is too heavy for you, Fanny. Nay, I insist upon it: I shall
carry it to the station for you."

It was not far to the station, and the box was not too heavy, but Fanny
yielded it. "He wants to see me safe out of the station," she thought.

"I will see her safe out of the place," he thought.

Ten minutes later the doors of the _salle d'attente_ were thrown open,
the train rolled in, and Fanny was carried away.

The doctor returned thoughtfully to the house. The time was come for
the execution of his project. Everybody was out of the way.

"She is gone," he said, when Lord Harry returned for breakfast at
eleven. "I saw her safely out of the station."

"Gone!" his confederate echoed: "and I am alone in the house with you
and--and----"

"The sick man--henceforth, yourself, my lord, yourself."

CHAPTER L

IN THE ALCOVE

THE doctor was wrong. Fanny Mere did return, though he did not discover
the fact.

She went away in a state of mind which is dangerous when it possesses a
woman of determination. The feminine mind loves to understand motives
and intentions; it hates to be puzzled. Fanny was puzzled. Fanny could
not understand what had been intended and what was now meant. For,
first, a man, apparently