rried to Mr Wilson, whose parents
would cut him off without a penny if they suspected the entanglement,
and this was the only plan by which you could spend a few days
together. Of course I swore him to secrecy."

For a moment I hesitated whether to resent this liberty, or to feel a
little pleased, or to be amused. Eileen laughed gaily, and so I
laughed too. And that was the end (so far) of my afternoon adventure.

III.

THURSDAY NIGHT.

I went up to my room early in the evening. Eileen had been very
silent, and about nine o'clock she bade us good-night and left us. To
sit alone with Tiel, feeling as I did and yet bound by a promise not to
upbraid him, was intolerable, and so I left the parlour a few minutes
after she did. As I went down the passage to the back, my way lit only
by the candle I was carrying, I was struck with a sound I had heard in
that house before, only never so loudly. It was the droning of the
wind through the crevices of some door, and the whining melancholy note
in the stillness of that house of divided plotters and confidences
withheld, did nothing to raise my spirits.

When I reached my room I realised what had caused the droning. The
wind had changed to a new quarter, and as another consequence my
chimney was smoking badly and the room was filled with a pungent blue
cloud. It is curious how events arise as consequences of trifling and
utterly different circumstances. I tried opening my door and then my
window, but still the fire smoked and the cloud refused to disperse.
Then I had an inspiration. I have mentioned a large cupboard. It was
so large as almost to be a minute room, and I remembered that it had a
skylight in its sloping roof. I opened this, and as the room at once
began to clear, I left it open.

And then I paced the floor and smoked and thought. What was to be made
of these very disquieting events? Clearly Tiel was either a much less
capable and clever man than he was reputed--a bit of a fraud in
fact--or else he was carrying his fondness for mystery and for suddenly
springing brilliant surprises, like conjuring tricks, upon people, to
the most extreme lengths. If he were really carrying out a cunning
deliberate policy in not preaching last Sunday, good and well, but it
was intolerable that he should have deceived me about it. It seemed
quite a feasible theory to suppose that he had got out of conducting
the service on some excuse in order that he might b