nner changed, though a flicker of curiosity passed across his face.

"Are you the lady his lordship is expecting?" he said, in a different
voice.

"Yes, Lord Deerehurst is expecting me."

There was a slight pause; then, with the air of one who admits a novice
into inner mysteries, he stepped back, ushering her up into the
spacious hall.

"Will you kindly step this way?" he said. "His lordship is in his
study."

Glad that the ordeal of entering the house was over, Clodagh readily
followed the man across the hall, up a wide stairs, and along a softly
carpeted corridor. At the end of the passage he paused in front of a
curtained door, and, pushing the curtain back, entered an unseen room.

"The lady your lordship is expecting!" she heard him say.

Then he turned quickly and threw the door open for her. An instant
later, she had entered Deerehurst's room.

At the moment, her thoughts were too confused to permit of detailed
observation of the room; although afterwards, when the interview had
taken place, and she had time to sift reality from imagination, the
scene and its central figure were destined to stand out with the
accuracy of a picture that has made an indelible, if an unconscious,
impression upon the observer's mind.

The room was an anomaly, viewed from a studious point of view; but the
merely artistic eye would have found nothing to cavil at. It was not
large, as one counts rooms in a great London house, though elsewhere it
would have seemed spacious. Numberless books in costly bindings were
strewn about on tables and in cases, but they were not the books of the
thinker. They were the romances, the memoirs, the poems of the last
half-century, but not one volume dealt with science, or even with
philosophy. The walls were panelled in dark red; some beautiful lamps
hung from the ceiling; and in a distant corner a large silver bowl full
of crimson roses was set up, as if in homage to beauty, before an
exquisitely modelled statue of Venus.

In a quick, half-comprehended flash of instinct, it came to Clodagh
that she had never really seen Deerehurst until now, as he stood
backgrounded by the atmosphere he himself had created. He was dressed
as he had been on the night in Venice when she had first seen him. He
wore the curiously cut evening clothes that he always affected, and
which gave to his appearance the peculiar distinction that set him
apart from other men; the diamond ring that she had noticed on that