atient's condition. That
seemed to occupy her wholly. With consummate art she gave the appearance
of being under Mrs. Postlethwaite's complete thrall, and watched with
fascinated eyes every movement of the one unstricken finger which could
do so much.

This little detective of ours could be an excellent actor when she
chose.

III

To make the old man speak! To force this conscience-stricken but
rebellious soul to reveal what the clock forbade! How could it be done?

This continued to be Violet's great problem. She pondered it so deeply
during all the remainder of the day that a little pucker settled on her
brow, which someone (I will not mention who) would have been pained to
see. Mrs. Postlethwaite, if she noticed it at all, probably ascribed it
to her anxieties as nurse, for never had Violet been more assiduous in
her attentions. But Mrs. Postlethwaite was no longer the woman she had
been, and possibly never noted it at all.

At five o'clock Violet suddenly left the room. Slipping down into the
lower hall, she went the round of the clocks herself, listening to every
one. There was no perceptible difference in their tick. Satisfied of
this and that it was simply the old man's imagination which had supplied
them each with separate speech, she paused before the huge one at the
foot of the stairs,--the one whose dictate he had promised himself
to follow,--and with an eye upon its broad, staring dial, muttered
wistfully:

"Oh! for an idea! For an idea!"

Did this cumbrous relic of old-time precision turn traitor at this
ingenuous plea? The dial continued to stare, the works to sing, but
Violet's face suddenly lost its perplexity. With a wary look about her
and a listening ear turned towards the stair top, she stretched out her
hand and pulled open the door guarding the pendulum, and peered in at
the works, smiling slyly to herself as she pushed it back into place and
retreated upstairs to the sick room.

When the doctor came that night she had a quiet word with him outside
Mrs. Postlethwaite's door. Was that why he was on hand when old Mr.
Dunbar stole from his room to make his nightly circuit of the halls
below? Something quite beyond the ordinary was in the good physician's
mind, for the look he cast at the old man was quite unlike any he had
ever bestowed upon him before, and when he spoke it was to say with
marked urgency:

"Our beautiful young lady will not live a week unless I get at the seat
of her mala