rgiveness is all on your side. You know I have nothing to forgive.' A
long silence fell between them.

'Then, to-night,' at last began Sheila wearily, drawing back, 'we
say nothing to Alice, except that you are too tired--just nervous
prostration--to see her. What we should do without this influenza, I
cannot conceive. Mr Bethany will probably look in on his way home; and
then we can talk it over--we can talk it over again. So long as you
are like this, yourself, in mind, why I--What is it now?' she broke off
querulously.

'If you please, ma'am, Mr Critchett says he doesn't know Dr Ferguson,
his name's not in the Directory, and there must be something wrong with
the message, and he's sorry, but he must have it in writing because
there was more even in the first packet than he ought by rights to send.
What shall I do, if you please?'

Still looking at her husband. Sheila listened quietly to the end, and
then, as if in inarticulate disdain, she deliberately shrugged her
shoulders, and went out to play her part unaided.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Her husband turned wearily once more, and drawing up a chair sat down in
front of the cold grate. He realised that Sheila thought him as much
of a fool now as she had for the moment thought him an impostor, or
something worse, the night before. That was at least something gained.
He realised, too, in a vague way that the exuberance of mind that had
practically invented Dr Ferguson, and outraged Miss Sinnet, had quite
suddenly flickered out. It was astonishing, he thought, with gaze
fixed innocently on the black coals, that he should ever have done such
things. He detested that kind of 'rot'; that jaunty theatrical pose so
many men prided their jackdaw brains on.

And he sat quite still, like a cat at a cranny, listening, as it
were, for the faintest remotest stir that might hint at any return of
this--activity. It was the first really sane moment he had had since
the 'change.' Whatever it was that had happened at Widderstone was now
distinctly weakening in effect. Why, now, perhaps? He stole a thievish
look over his shoulder at the glass, and cautiously drew finger and
thumb down that beaked nose. Then he really quietly smiled, a smile he
felt this abominable facial caricature was quite unused to, the superior
Lawford smile of guileless contempt for the fanatical, the fantastic,
and the bizarre: He wouldn't have sat with his feet on the fender before
a burnt-out fire.

And the a