the room is so
dark "Surely," I say, "it cannot be night already?"

"You have not been asleep," she answers, "for more than two hours. The
mist has disappeared, and the sun is shining."

I take up the bell, standing on the table at my side.

"May I ring for Peter, Miss Dunross?"

"To open the curtains, Mr. Germaine?"

"Yes--with your permission. I own I should like to see the sunlight."

"I will send Peter to you immediately."

The shadowy figure of my new nurse glides away. In another moment,
unless I say something to stop her, the woman whom I am so eager to see
will have left the room.

"Pray don't go!" I say. "I cannot think of troubling you to take a
trifling message for me. The servant will come in, if I only ring the
bell."

She pauses--more shadowy than ever--halfway between the bed and the
door, and answers a little sadly:

"Peter will not let in the daylight while I am in the room. He closed
the curtains by my order."

The reply puzzles me. Why should Peter keep the room dark while Miss
Dunross is in it? Are her eyes weak? No; if her eyes were weak, they
would be protected by a shade. Dark as it is, I can see that she does
not wear a shade. Why has the room been darkened--if not for me? I
cannot venture on asking the question--I can only make my excuses in due
form.

"Invalids only think of themselves," I say. "I supposed that you had
kindly darkened the room on my account."

She glides back to my bedside before she speaks again. When she does
answer, it is in these startling words:

"You were mistaken, Mr. Germaine. Your room has been darkened--not on
your account, but on _mine_."

CHAPTER XIX. THE CATS.

MISS DUNROSS had so completely perplexed me, that I was at a loss what
to say next.

To ask her plainly why it was necessary to keep the room in darkness
while she remained in it, might prove (for all I knew to the contrary)
to be an act of positive rudeness. To venture on any general expression
of sympathy with her, knowing absolutely nothing of the circumstances,
might place us both in an embarrassing position at the outset of our
acquaintance. The one thing I could do was to beg that the present
arrangement of the room might not be disturbed, and to leave her to
decide as to whether she should admit me to her confidence or exclude me
from it, at her own sole discretion.

She perfectly understood what was going on in my mind. Taking a chair at
the foot of the bed, she told me simp