going to sit
down calmly over the matter. I must--I will see her again."

Then he trembled, and the hot burning sensation came once more. But it
passed off, and he felt that he must be calm and wait till he had
another long sleep, when he hoped to be quite restored.

He lay trying now to forget all that had passed, so as to rest for a
while; but sleep would not come, and he could do nothing but dwell upon
his adventures at that mysterious house. It was so strange. The
servants had evidently been sent away, so that they might know nothing
of what threatened for long enough to prove a murder. He wanted to know
of none other cause for the quarrel. His patient must have been shot
down while defending his sister from some insult offered by the clever,
overbearing, unprincipled scoundrel who seemed to lord it over all.

And as Chester lay thinking, an intense desire came over him to learn
more of the family who had literally imprisoned him, and kept him there
all those days. When there, it had seemed for the most part like some
romantic dream; and as he lay now at home thinking, the vague
intangibility of those nights and days appeared to him more fanciful and
strange than ever; so much so, that there were moments when he was ready
to ask himself whether, after all, it was not the result of imagination.

He recalled all the actors in the little social drama--the men whom he
had seen on the first night, and who dropped out of sight afterwards;
the two ladies--the wives of the brothers--both quiet, startled-looking
women, of the type that would be seen exhibiting the latest fashions at
some race, at Lord's, or at a meeting of the Four-in-Hand Club, and
evidently slaves of their husbands--and he recalled now how the wife of
the elder brother seemed to hold her lord in dread.

"There's something more about that place than one knows," Chester
thought to himself as he turned from side to side, "and I cannot--I will
not, sit down and patiently bear such treatment. To-morrow I'll go and
demand an explanation. I have a good excuse," he said half aloud and
with a bitter laugh; "there is my promised fee, and--Pish!" he exclaimed
savagely. "If I am to prove a scoundrel, I will be an honest one. I
will ferret out who and what they are. I behaved like a child in not
having some explanation earlier--in yielding passively as I did without
reason--no, not without reason. I could not help it. Heaven help me!
I will--I must s