;
and I thought it desirable to judge for myself of the progress that he
was making in the confidence of his employer. I said I would wait.
The hotel servant knows me by sight. I was shown into Romayne's
waiting-room.

This room is so small as to be a mere cupboard. It is lighted by a glass
fanlight over the door which opens from the passage, and is supplied
with air (in the absence of a fireplace) by a ventilator in a second
door, which communicates with Romayne's study. Looking about me, so far,
I crossed to the other end of the study, and discovered a dining-room
and two bedrooms beyond--the set of apartments being secluded, by means
of a door at the end of the passage, from the other parts of the hotel.
I trouble you with these details in order that you may understand the
events that followed.

I returned to the waiting-room, not forgetting of course to close the
door of communication.

Nearly an hour must have passed before I heard footsteps in the passage.
The study door was opened, and the voices of persons entering the room
reached me through the ventilator. I recognized Romayne, Penrose--and
Lord Loring.

The first words exchanged among them informed me that Romayne and his
secretary had overtaken Lord Loring in the street, as he was approaching
the hotel door. The three had entered the house together--at a time,
probably, when the servant who had admitted me was out of the
way. However it may have happened, there I was, forgotten in the
waiting-room!

Could I intrude myself (on a private conversation perhaps) as an
unannounced and unwelcome visitor? And could I help it, if the talk
found its way to me through the ventilator, along with the air that I
breathed? If our Reverend Fathers think I was to blame, I bow to any
reproof which their strict sense of propriety may inflict on me. In the
meantime, I beg to repeat the interesting passages in the conversation,
as nearly word for word as I can remember them.

His lordship, as the principal personage in social rank, shall be
reported first. He said: "More than a week has passed, Romayne, and we
have neither seen you nor heard from you. Why have you neglected us?"

Here, judging by certain sounds that followed, Penrose got up
discreetly, and left the room. Lord Loring went on.

He said to Romayne: "Now we are alone, I may speak to you more freely.
You and Stella seemed to get on together admirably that evening when you
dined with us. Have you forgotten