way. This baby is worth nursing. It would break my
heart if anything happened to it now!"

So we celebrated my first night in the furnished house; and I slept
beyond belief, slept as I never was to sleep there again. But it was
strange to hear the milkman in the early morning, and the postman
knocking his way along the street an hour later, and to be passed over
by one destroying angel after another. I had come down early enough,
and watched through the drawing-room blind the cleansing of all the
steps in the street but ours. Yet Raffles had evidently been up some
time; the house seemed far purer than overnight as though he had
managed to air it room by room; and from the one with the gas-stove
there came a frizzling sound that fattened the heart.

I only would I had the pen to do justice to the week I spent in-doors
on Campden Hill! It might make amusing reading; the reality for me was
far removed from the realm of amusement. Not that I was denied many a
laugh of suppressed heartiness when Raffles and I were together. But
half our time we very literally saw nothing of each other. I need not
say whose fault that was. He would be quiet; he was in ridiculous and
offensive earnest about his egregious Cure. Kinglake he would read by
the hour together, day and night, by the hanging lamp, lying upstairs
on the best bed. There was daylight enough for me in the drawing-room
below; and there I would sit immersed in criminous tomes weakly
fascinated until I shivered and shook in my stocking soles. Often I
longed to do something hysterically desperate, to rouse Raffles and
bring the street about our ears; once I did bring him about mine by
striking a single note on the piano, with the soft pedal down. His
neglect of me seemed wanton at the time. I have long realized that he
was only wise to maintain silence at the expense of perilous
amenities, and as fully justified in those secret and solitary sorties
which made bad blood in my veins. He was far cleverer than I at
getting in and out; but even had I been his match for stealth and
wariness, my company would have doubled every risk. I admit now that
he treated me with quite as much sympathy as common caution would
permit. But at the time I took it so badly as to plan a small revenge.

What with his flourishing beard and the increasing shabbiness of the
only suit he had brought with him to the house, there was no denying
that Raffles had now the advantage of a permanent disguise.