"Well, miss, master certainly expects you to stay till morning, and asked me hours ago to arrange accordingly. But most likely he will speak to you himself about it. And now, if you are ready, we will go downstairs." But Nell could not go without another kiss. "He is not left alone while he sleeps," remarked Mrs. Dobson as they left the room; "my niece watches by him." Downstairs Miss Baynard found the table laid for one person, and three minutes later a dainty little supper was brought in. "When shall I see Mr. Ellerslie?" she asked, as the housekeeper was on the point of leaving the room. "He will do himself the honor of waiting upon you in the course of half an hour." It was very rarely that Nell's appetite failed her, and her long ride through the night air had, if anything, tended to sharpen it on the present occasion. She was a healthy English girl, who came of a healthy stock. She hardly knew that she had such things as nerves. She was neither hysterical, nor anæmic, nor introspective. No _fin-de-siècle_ questions troubled her, because the century was yet in its infancy. She was a warm-hearted, warm-blooded creature, somewhat too impulsive perhaps, and too easily led away by her own generous instincts, and although an existence such as hers would nowadays be regarded as intolerably narrow and antiquated, yet was her life an exemplar of several of those minor if homely virtues with which so many of our up-to-date young women profess to be, and probably are, wholly unacquainted, and to regard with silent contempt. At any rate, Miss Baynard did full justice to her supper. Scarcely had the table been cleared when Mr. Ellerslie entered the room. To Nell it seemed as if she might have parted from him no longer ago than the day before, so wholly unchanged was he from the picture of him which still lived so freshly in her memory. There was the long, grizzled hair parted down the middle, the short Vandyck beard and moustache, the black velvet skull cap, and the dark monkish robe which wrapped him from head to foot. There, too, was the set, mask-like face with its thousands of fine wrinkles, which from a little distance looked as if it were carved out of old ivory, a face which seemed to emphasize the pair of brilliant black eyes that looked out from under their heavy penthouse brows with an illusive something in them which reminded Nell strangely of Geoffrey Dare. As he entered the room Miss Baynard rose and advanced to meet him with both hands outstretched. "Oh, Mr. Ellerslie!" she said, and in her voice there was a veiled emotion not far removed from tears, "how can I ever thank you enough, how ever be sufficiently grateful to you, for the glad surprise you have given me this evening? Surely you must be a necromancer, or the good wizard of a fairy tale, for to me it seems nothing less than a fairy tale to have one I hold so dear restored to me in this fashion."