am
going to take a doctor's privilege and prescribe," he added, trying to
assume a lighter tone. "I advise your ladyship, and every one, to come
down to the dining-room and have coffee and something more solid. A
night like this is terribly exhausting. We shall need all our strength
to meet the next twenty-four hours."

XXIX

Anne Harding arrived at ten o'clock. Bellamy asked Sophy to explain the
situation to the nurse while she changed into her uniform. There was no
time to lose. He would see her himself as soon as she had dressed.

Bellamy had wanted a locksmith sent for to pick the lock of Chesney's
door while he slept, but Lady Wychcote would not have this. She was
determined that things should wait as they were for Nurse Harding's
arrival.

"She may want to make him open the door himself--for the moral effect of
it," she said, with real acumen.

"Awfully keen old lady she is, my word!" Anne had exclaimed, when Sophy
told her this. "Just what I do want!"

"But, Nurse, do you think he will open that door for any one?" Sophy had
asked, wondering.

"I know how to make him--never you fear," Anne had replied crisply.
"We'll have to wait a bit--for him to sober up, you know," she added,
with her usual bluntness.

She then went for her interview with Bellamy. It astounded and chagrined
her to find that Chesney had procured morphine and cocaine, for she was
convinced that he had been in possession of it all the while. She felt
humiliated, in her capacity of little Know-All, that she had been
ignorant of this fact. For the present, however, she contented herself
with seeing that all the alcohol in the house was locked safely away.
Her little brown mouth looked very grim as she sat near the bedroom
door, waiting for Chesney to wake from his stupefied slumber.

He did not rouse till nearly four o'clock. Then she heard short,
impatient moans, given under his breath, as it were. The bed creaked now
and again with his feverish tossings. Anne lifted an alert head. She
half smiled, queerly; then turned to Gaynor. The two had sat side by
side for hours now--Anne crocheting, the valet looking down at his hands
or straight at the wall opposite.

"Go get a small glass of brandy, please," she said, putting her
crochet-work into her pocket.

The valet looked so startled that she nodded to him reassuringly.

"That's all right," she said. "Doctor Bellamy knows. You trust to me."

"I do, miss," he said meekly, and