be an empty dark room, and was disconcerted by an
ill-used murmur in the darkness--a meek, submissive voice of one
accustomed to slights:

"I told her to blow it out and go to bed. It is all--quite--right, my
dear. So do not complain. Now help me with my things, and I will get
to bed."

"My dear mother! I _am_ so sorry. I had no idea you had not gone long
ago!"

"My dear!--it does not matter in the least now. What is done, is done.
Be careful with the grease over my work. These candles drop
dreadfully, unless you hold them exactly upright. And gutter. Now give
me your arm, and I will go to bed. I _think_ I shall sleep." And the
worthy woman was really--if her son could only have got his eyes freed
from the scales of domestic superstition, and seen it--intensely happy
and exultant at this fiendish little piece of discomfort-mongering.
She had scored; there was no doubt of it. She was even turning it over
in her own mind whether it would not bear repetition at a future
time; and quite intended, if so, to enjoy herself over it. Now the
doctor was contrite and heavy at heart at his cruel conduct; walking
about--just think!--and talking over his own affairs while his
self-sacrificing mother was sitting in the dark, with the lamp out!
To be sure there was no visible reason why she should have had it
put out, except as a picturesque and imaginative way of rubbing her
altruism into its nearest victim. Unless, indeed, it was done in order
that the darkened window should seem to announce to the returning
truant that she had gone to bed, and to lull his mind to
unconsciousness of the ambush that awaited him.

Anyhow, the doctor was so impressed with his own delinquency that he
felt it would be impossible, the lamp having been put out, to take his
mother into his confidence about his conversation with Fenwick. Which
he certainly would have done--late as the hour was--if it had been
left in. So he said good-night, and carried the chaos of his emotions
away to bed with him, and lay awake with them till cock-crow.

* * * * *

As Fenwick walked back home, timing his pace by his expectation of
his cigar's duration, he wondered whether, perhaps, he had not been
a little rash. He felt obliged to go back on interviews with Sally, in
which the doctor had been spoken of. He recalled for his justification
one in particular. The family conclave at Krakatoa Villa had recurred
to a remark of Rosalind's abou