Sir Stopleigh put his head in at the door, saying to his wife would she come out for a minute and speak to him? On which Madeline said suddenly, "I shall go to bed. Good-night, Uncle Christopher!--Good-night, Pupsey and Mumsey!" and lit a candle and went away quickly upstairs. "How very funny of Mad," her mother said, as she followed her husband from the room. "Not at all like her! I'll say good-night, Uncle Christopher, but you do as you like." The momentary vision of Sir Stopleigh--who said he would come back directly--left Mr. Pelly with an impression that he was very full of something to tell. And certainly there came a great sudden exclamation of glad surprise from her ladyship almost as soon as the door closed behind her. "I shall hear all about it in good time," said Mr. Pelly. "At least, I suppose so." He sat down contentedly in the large armchair opposite the picture, and looked at the fire. Seventy-seven can wait. The murmur of a distant colloquy, heard through doors and passages, and quenched by carpets, assorts itself into its elements as the silence in the library gets under weigh, and sharpens Mr. Pelly's hearing. He is clear about the woman's voice: his hostess's, of course--no other. But is that George's, or the General's, the unexplained outsider's? Surely that was a third voice, just now? Never mind, Mr. Pelly can wait! CHAPTER XI How the picture spoke again. Abstract metaphysical questions, and no answers. How the Picture's memory was sharpened, and how Mr. Pelly woke up. Mr. Stebbings and Mrs. Buckmaster. The actule fax. Jack's resurrection, without an arm. Full particulars. All fair in love. How Mr. Pelly knew the picture could see all, and how Madeline had not gone to bed. Captain Maclagan's family. Fuller particulars. General Fordyce and the Bart, not wanted. What the picture must have seen and may have thought. Good-bye to the story. Mere postscript. It is scarcely fair play to make a merit of patience--isn't cricket, as folk say nowadays--when you are in a comfortable armchair before a warm fire, and are feeling drowsy. But, then, Mr. Pelly was under an entirely wrong impression on this point, and had scheduled himself as wakeful, but content to bide his time. Yet he might reasonably have suspected himself of drowsiness when James, the young man, coming to wind up the contents of the room, and revise the shutters, retreated with apologies. For had he been really awake, he would certainly have said, "All right, James! Come in. Never mind me!" As it was, he deferred doing so a fraction of a second, and the consequences were fatal. He remained wide awake, no doubt--people always do. But he had not the slightest idea that James had gone, closing the door gently, when the picture said to him from the chimneypiece, in exactly the voice he had heard before, "Is it all true?"