oom in a spirit of intense thankfulness that he had
a Christian bed to sleep in. He took off his gorgeous robes--the only
things that remained to prove to him that the events of that evening had
been no delusion--and locked them in his wardrobe with a sense of
relief that he would never be required to wear them again, and his last
conscious thought before he fell asleep was the comforting reflection
that, if there were any barrier between Sylvia and himself, it would be
removed in the course of a very few more hours.

CHAPTER XI

A FOOL'S PARADISE

Ventimore found next morning that his bath and shaving-water had been
brought up, from which he inferred, quite correctly, that his landlady
must have returned.

Secretly he was by no means looking forward to his next interview with
her, but she appeared with his bacon and coffee in a spirit so evidently
chastened that he saw that he would have no difficulty so far as she was
concerned.

"I'm sure, Mr. Ventimore, sir," she began, apologetically, "I don't know
what you must have thought of me and Rapkin last night, leaving the
house like we did!"

"It was extremely inconvenient," said Horace, "and not at all what I
should have expected from you. But possibly you had some reason for it?"

"Why, sir," said Mrs. Rapkin, running her hand nervously along the back
of a chair, "the fact is, something come over me, and come over Rapkin,
as we couldn't stop here another minute not if it was ever so."

"Ah!" said Horace, raising his eyebrows, "restlessness--eh, Mrs. Rapkin?
Awkward that it should come on just then, though, wasn't it?"

"It was the look of the place, somehow," said Mrs. Rapkin. "If you'll
believe me, sir, it was all changed like--nothing in it the same from
top to bottom!"

"Really?" said Horace. "I don't notice any difference myself."

"No more don't I, sir, not by daylight; but last night it was all domes
and harches and marble fountings let into the floor, with parties
moving about downstairs all silent and as black as your hat--which
Rapkin saw them as well as what I did."

"From the state your husband was in last night," said Horace, "I should
say he was capable of seeing anything--and double of most things."

"I won't deny, sir, that Rapkin mayn't have been quite hisself, as a
very little upsets him after he's spent an afternoon studying the papers
and what-not at the libery. But I see the niggers too, Mr. Ventimore,
and no one can say _I_ e