and its inmates against the world--this new and
tardy contact with humanity, this momentary return to neighbourly, kindly
ways brought with it a strange sweetness. And when night fell, and a
subdued, scarcely perceptible murmur of life began to creep about the
passages of the old house, in general so dead and silent, Mrs. Dixon
might have been heard hoarsely crooning an old song to herself as she
went to and fro in the kitchen. All the evening she and Dixon were
restless, inventing work, when work was finished, running from yard to
house and house to yard, calling to each other without reason, and
looking at each other with bewildered eyes. They were like beetles under
a stone, when the stone is suddenly lifted.

Gradually the house sank to rest. Dixon creeping past the door of the
sick-room, on his stockinged feet, could hear the moaning, the hoarse
indeterminate sounds, now loud, now plaintive, made by the sufferer. The
day nurse came out with an anxious face, on her way to bed. Mr. Faversham
she said was very ill--what could be done if it did become necessary to
summon the doctor? Dixon assured her the gardener who was also the groom
was sleeping in the house, and the horse was in the stable. She had only
to wake Mrs. Dixon--he showed her where and how. In the dark corridor,
amid all its obstructive lumber, these two people who had never seen each
other before, man and woman, took anxious counsel for the help of an
unconscious third, a complete stranger to both of them.

The night nurse gave a dose of morphia according to directions, and sat
down on a low chair at the foot of the bed watching her patient.

About two o'clock in the morning, just as the darkness was beginning to
thin, she was startled by a sound outside. She half rose, and saw the
door open to admit a tall and gaunt figure, whom she recognized as the
master of the house.

She held up an anxious finger, but Melrose advanced in spite of it. His
old flowered dressing-gown and gray head came within the range of the
night-light, and the nurse saw his shadow projected, grotesque and
threatening, on the white traceries of the ceiling. But he made no sound,
and never looked at the nurse. He stood surveying young Faversham for
some time, as he lay hot and haggard with fever, yet sleeping under the
power of morphia. And at last, without a word, the nurse saw her
formidable visitor depart.

Melrose returned to his own quarters. The window of his room was ope