; and, taking my right arm, lifted my hand toward her face. Was she
going to kiss it? or to bite it? Neither. She smelt it like a dog--and
dropped it again with a hoarse chuckling laugh.

"You don't smell of his perfumes," she said. "You _haven't_ touched his
beard. _Now_ I believe you. Want a cab?"

"Thank you. I'll walk till I meet a cab."

She was bent on being polite to me--now I had _not_ touched his beard.

"I say!" she burst out, in her deepest notes.

"Yes?"

"I'm glad I didn't upset you in the canal. There now!"

She gave me a friendly smack on the shoulder which nearly knocked me
down--relapsed, the instant after, into her leaden stolidity of look
and manner---and led the way out by the front door. I heard her hoarse
chuckling laugh as she locked the gate behind me. My star was at last
in the ascendant! In one and the same day I had found my way into the
confidence of Ariel and Ariel's master.

CHAPTER XXXI. THE DEFENSE OF MRS. BEAULY.

THE days that elapsed before Major Fitz-David's dinner-party were
precious days to me.

My long interview with Miserrimus Dexter had disturbed me far more
seriously than I suspected at the time. It was not until some hours
after I had left him that I really began to feel how my nerves had been
tried by all that I had seen and heard during my visit at his house.
I started at the slightest noises; I dreamed of dreadful things; I was
ready to cry without reason at one moment, and to fly into a passion
without reason at another. Absolute rest was what I wanted, and (thanks
to my good Benjamin) was what I got. The dear old man controlled his
anxieties on my account, and spared me the questions which his fatherly
interest in my welfare made him eager to ask. It was tacitly understood
between us that all conversation on the subject of my visit to
Miserrimus Dexter (of which, it is needless to say, he strongly
disapproved) should be deferred until repose had restored my energies of
body and mind. I saw no visitors. Mrs. Macallan came to the cottage,
and Major Fitz-David came to the cottage--one of them to hear what had
passed between Miserrimus Dexter and myself, the other to amuse me with
the latest gossip about the guests at the forthcoming dinner. Benjamin
took it on himself to make my apologies, and to spare me the exertion
of receiving my visitors. We hired a little open carriage, and took long
drives in the pretty country lanes still left flourishing within a
few