menthe, dripping from a
phial, spotted it green. He did not notice. At the moment the spasm had
him. Then as that clicked and passed, he looked in the expressionless
face of the butler who had told him.

The spasm had shaken him into a chair.

The room, an oblong, was furnished after a fashion of long ago. The
daised bed was ascended by low, wide steps. Beyond stood a table of
lapis-lazuli. A mantel of the same material was surmounted by a mirror
framed in jasper. Beneath the mirror, a fire burned dimly. The lights
too were dim. They were diffused by tall wax candles that stood shaded
in high gold sticks. On the table there were three of them.

The chair was near this table, at which M. P. had been occupied very
laboriously, in doing nothing, a task that he performed in preparation
for the bed, which was always ready for him, and for sleep, which seldom
was. There he had been told. It had shaken him to his feet, shaken
apoplexy at him and shaken him back in the chair.

Now, as he looked at the servant's wooden mask, for a moment he relived
an age, not a pleasant one either and of which this blow, had he known
it, was perhaps the karma. He did not know it. He knew nothing of karma.
None the less, with that curious intuition which the great crises
induce, he too divined the woman and wished to God that he had kept his
hands off, wished that he had not interfered and told Monty to put her
in a flat and be damned to her! It was she, he could have sworn it. At
once, precisely as he wished he had let her alone, he hoped and quite as
fervently that she had covered her tracks, that there would be no trial,
nothing but inept conjectures and that forgetfulness in which all
things, good and bad, lose their way.

The futility of wishing passed. The time for action had come. He
motioned. "Is Benny here?"

"He left this noon, sir."

"Did he say anything?"

The butler did not know whether to lie or not, but seeing no personal
advantage in either course, he hedged. "Very little, sir."

That little, the old man weighed. A little is often enough. It may be
too much.

"He spoke about a girl, eh?"

"He said a lady was stopping there. Yes, sir."

"What else?"

The butler shuffled. "He said she was very pretty, sir."

"Go on, Canlon."

"Well, sir, it seems there was a joke about it. The young lady thought
she was married."

"How was that?"

"I'm not supposed to know, sir. But from what was let on, Benny was
rigged ou