ntly
he gave voice to them.

"It is exceedingly good for him that someone besides myself and the
butler and his wife should know that he is alive, and that he should know
they do know it. I agreed to this mad business because I believed it
would give him an interest in living, eccentric though the interest might
be."

Trix gurgled.

"It sounds so odd," she explained, "to hear you say that pretending to be
dead could give any one an interest in life." And she gurgled again.
Trix's gurgling was peculiarly infectious.

"Odd!" laughed Doctor Hilary. "It's the oddest thing imaginable. No one
but Nick could have conceived the whole business, or found the smallest
interest in it. But he did find an interest, and that was enough for me.
He is lonely now, I grant. But before this--this invention, he was
stagnant as well as lonely. His mind, and seemingly his soul with it, had
become practically atrophied. His mind has now been roused to interest,
though the most extraordinarily eccentric interest."

"And his soul?" queried Trix simply.

Doctor Hilary shook his head.

"Ah, that I don't know," he said.

They parted company at the door of Doctor Hilary's house. Trix went on
slowly down the road. She paused opposite the presbytery, before turning
to the left in the direction of Woodleigh. She rang the bell, and asked
to see Father Dormer.

He came to her in the little parlour.

"Oh," said Trix, getting up as he entered, "I only came to ask you to say
a Mass for my intention. And, please, will you say one every week till I
ask you to stop?"

"By all means," he responded.

"Thank you," said Trix. Then she glanced at a clock on the mantelpiece.
"I had no idea it was so late," she said.

She walked home at a fair pace. The midge bite had ceased to worry her.
But then, at Doctor Hilary's suggestion, she had ceased to rub it. She
was thinking of only one thing now, of a solitary old figure in a large
and gloomy library.

She sighed heavily once or twice. Well, at all events she had asked for
Masses for him.

CHAPTER XXV

PRICKLES

If you happen to have anything on your mind, it is impossible--or
practically impossible--to avoid thinking about it. Which, doubtless, is
so obvious a fact, it is barely worth stating.

The Duchessa di Donatello had something on her mind; it possessed her
waking thoughts, it coloured her dreams. And what that something was, is
also, perhaps, entirely obvious. Again and again sh