bestow upon refuge homes and
labour organisations.

"I think that greys are the nicest horses," she said. "Bays are nice
too, but greys are more showy. We could manage with a brougham and a
landau, and perhaps a high dog-cart for Raffles. He has the coach-house
full at present, but he never uses them, and I am sure that those fifty
horses would all die for want of exercise, or get livers like Strasburg
geese, if they waited for him to ride or drive them."

"I suppose that you will still live here?" said her brother.

"We must have a house in London as well, and run up for the season. I
don't, of course, like to make suggestions now, but it will be different
afterwards. I am sure that Raffles will do it if I ask him. It is all
very well for him to say that he does not want any thanks or honours,
but I should like to know what is the use of being a public benefactor
if you are to have no return for it. I am sure that if he does only
half what he talks of doing, they will make him a peer--Lord Tamfield,
perhaps--and then, of course, I shall be my Lady Tamfield, and what
would you think of that, Bob?" She dropped him a stately curtsey, and
tossed her head in the air, as one who was born to wear a coronet.

"Father must be pensioned off," she remarked presently. "He shall have
so much a year on condition that he keeps away. As to you, Bob, I don't
know what we shall do for you. We shall make you President of the Royal
Academy if money can do it."

It was late before they ceased building their air-castles and retired to
their rooms. But Robert's brain was excited, and he could not sleep.
The events of the day had been enough to shake a stronger man. There
had been the revelation of the morning, the strange sights which he
had witnessed in the laboratory, and the immense secret which had been
confided to his keeping. Then there had been his conversation with his
father in the afternoon, their disagreement, and the sudden intrusion
of Raffles Haw. Finally the talk with his sister had excited his
imagination, and driven sleep from his eyelids. In vain he turned and
twisted in his bed, or paced the floor of his chamber. He was not only
awake, but abnormally awake, with every nerve highly strung, and every
sense at the keenest. What was he to do to gain a little sleep? It
flashed across him that there was brandy in the decanter downstairs, and
that a glass might act as a sedative.

He had opened the door of his room, when s