Miss Trelawny and I, remained in silence. At
last she raised her eyes and looked at me for a moment; after that I
would not have exchanged places with a king. For a while she busied
herself round the extemporised bedside of her father. Then, asking me
to be sure not to take my eyes off him till she returned, she hurried
out.

In a few minutes she came back with Mrs. Grant and two maids and a
couple of men, who bore the entire frame and furniture of a light iron
bed. This they proceeded to put together and to make. When the work
was completed, and the servants had withdrawn, she said to me:

"It will be well to be all ready when the Doctor returns. He will
surely want to have Father put to bed; and a proper bed will be better
for him than the sofa." She then got a chair close beside her father,
and sat down watching him.

I went about the room, taking accurate note of all I saw. And truly
there were enough things in the room to evoke the curiosity of any
man--even though the attendant circumstances were less strange. The
whole place, excepting those articles of furniture necessary to a
well-furnished bedroom, was filled with magnificent curios, chiefly
Egyptian. As the room was of immense size there was opportunity for the
placing of a large number of them, even if, as with these, they were of
huge proportions.

Whilst I was still investigating the room there came the sound of
wheels on the gravel outside the house. There was a ring at the hall
door, and a few minutes later, after a preliminary tap at the door and
an answering "Come in!" Doctor Winchester entered, followed by a young
woman in the dark dress of a nurse.

"I have been fortunate!" he said as he came in. "I found her at once
and free. Miss Trelawny, this is Nurse Kennedy!"

Chapter III

The Watchers

I was struck by the way the two young women looked at each other. I
suppose I have been so much in the habit of weighing up in my own mind
the personality of witnesses and of forming judgment by their
unconscious action and mode of bearing themselves, that the habit
extends to my life outside as well as within the court-house. At this
moment of my life anything that interested Miss Trelawny interested me;
and as she had been struck by the newcomer I instinctively weighed her
up also. By comparison of the two I seemed somehow to gain a new
knowledge of Miss Trelawny. Certainly, the two women made a good
contrast. Miss Trelawny wa