orridor was alone wanting to render the illusion perfect.
It was certainly astonishing--what you could buy with seven thousand two
hundred and fifty pounds! Perhaps the most striking portion of the
scenery was Helen's peignoir. He had not before witnessed her in a
peignoir. The effect of it was agreeable; but, indeed, the modern taste
for luxury was incredible! He wondered if Mrs. Prockter practised
similar extravagances.

While such notions ran through his head he was hurrying to the stairs,
and dropping a hail of candle-grease on the floor. He found Mrs.
Prockter slowly and cautiously ascending the stairway. If he was at the
summit of Mont Blanc she had already reached Les Grands Mulets.

"What is it?" she asked, pausing, and looking up at him with an
appealing gesture.

"What's what?"

"Why have you been so long?" It was as if she implied that these minutes
without him were an eternity of ennui. He grew more and more conceited.
He was already despising Don Juan as a puling boy.

"Helen heard summat, and so she had come out of her bedroom. Her's
nervous i' this big house."

"Did you tell her I was here, Mr. Ollerenshaw?"

By this time he had rejoined her at Les Grands Mulets.

"No," he said, without sufficiently reflecting.

"She didn't hear me call out, then?"

"Did ye call out?" If he was in a theatre, he also could act.

"Perhaps it's just as well," said Mrs. Prockter, after a momentary
meditation. "Under the circumstances she cannot possibly suspect our
little plot."

Their little plot! In yielding to the impulse to tell her that Helen was
unaware of her presence in the house he had forgotten that he had made
it excessively difficult for him to demolish the said plot. He could not
one moment agree with enthusiasm to the plot, and the next moment say
that the plot had better be abandoned. Some men, doubtless, could. But
he could not. He was scarcely that kind of man. His proper course would
have been to relate to Mrs. Prockter exactly what had passed between
himself and Helen, and trust to her common sense. Unhappily, with the
intention of pleasing her, or reassuring her, or something equally
silly, he had lied to her and rendered the truth impracticable. However,
he did not seem to care much. He had already pushed Helen's affairs back
again to quite a secondary position.

"I suppose ye think it'll be all right, missis," he said,
carelessly--"ye going up to Mrs. Swetnam's o' that 'n, and--"

"Rely