"Must make a difference, I should say. Don't pretend to understand the subject." Thus the Artist, absorbed again in retouching the sketch of no importance. And do you know, he seemed rather to make a parade of his indifference. In which he was very like people one meets at Manifestations, only scarcely so bad. For a many of them, face to face with what they are pretending to think their own _post mortem_, remain unimpressed, and cut jokes. Then, of course, we have to remember that it is usually a paid Medium--that may make a difference. We think, however, it is safe to say that had Miss Volumnia, when she conversed with Miss Upwell at the second, or fulfilled, Bun-Worry, been in possession of the facts elicited at this interview, she might have detailed them so as to induce in that young lady's mind a more lenient attitude towards the incredulity of her father and Mr. Pelly about the picture. As it was--and it is very necessary to bear this in mind in reading what remains to be told--this interview had not then taken place, and did not in fact come about till nearly two months later, when the compiling of the Society's Quarterly Report made the adoption of a definite attitude towards the Picture Story necessary. CHAPTER X How Mr. Pelly, subject to interruption, read aloud a translation from Italian. Who was the Old Devil? Who was the Duchessa? Of the narrator's incarceration. Of his incredible escape. Whose horse was that in the Avenue? How Mr. Pelly read faster. Was Uguccio killed? Sir Stopleigh scandalised. But then it was the Middle Ages--one of them, anyhow! How only Duchesses know if Dukes are asleep. Of the bone Mr. Polly picked with Madeline. But what becomes of Unconscious Cerebration? Ambrose Paré. Marta's little knife. Love was not unknown in the Middle Ages. The end of the manuscript. But Sir Stopleigh went out to see a visitor, in the middle. How Madeline turned white, and went suddenly to bed. What was it all about? Seventy-seven could wait. Of course you recollect that Mr. Pelly, when he came back from his great-grandniece's wedding at Cowcester, was to read the manuscript Professor Schrudengesser had sent him from Florence, which had been the probable cause of all that fantastic dream-story he wrote out so cleverly from memory? Dear Uncle Christopher!--how lucky he should recollect it all like that! Especially now that it had all turned out real, because where was the use of denying it after Mrs. Aiken had heard the photograph speak, too? If a mere photograph could make itself audible, of course a picture could--the original!