On this particular morning the sense of dreariness was very heavy upon him. On the previous day he had had an interview with the great doctor to whose fiat he owed his detention in London. The great doctor had been indefinite and unsatisfactory; had looked grave and talked vaguely about troublesome complications and a possible necessity of complete repose. Falconer had made no sign of discomposure, had taken his leave with his usual courteous gravity, and had left the consulting-room with a cold chill at his heart. The cold chill was about it still this morning as he walked to his window before going to the breakfast-table, and stood there looking blankly out. What he was really looking at was the prospect before him if, as the doctor had hinted, he should have to lie up for a time. A lodging and a nurse, or a hospital; solitude and confinement in either case. He sighed heavily, and turning as though with the instinct to turn away from his troubles, he sat down to the table, poured out his coffee, and took up the letters lying by his plate. There were only two--one in a common-looking envelope directed in an illiterate hand, the other in a clear, characteristic man’s hand, at the sight of which his face brightened perceptibly. “Aston,” he said to himself, and opened it quickly. His friendship for the little doctor, which time had only served to strengthen, was, perhaps, the most genial sentiment of Dennis Falconer’s life, and Dr. Aston’s absence in India at this particular period had been a bitter disappointment to him. He had hoped for some time that the doctor’s plans--always of a somewhat erratic nature--might bring him back to London shortly; and as his eyes fell on the first sentence of the letter a slight sound of intense relief escaped him; an eloquent testimony to his present loneliness. Dr. Aston began by telling him that he would be in England before Christmas. The letter was long and interesting; it abounded in bits of vivid description and shrewd observation, and its comments on Falconer’s proceedings were keen and kindly. Its recipient allowed himself to become absorbed in it to the total neglect of his breakfast, and his expression was lighter than it had been for weeks when he came upon these sentences towards the close of the letter: “By-the-bye, in the ‘latest intelligence’ of London society--all is fish in the shape of human nature that comes to my net, as you know, and I study that curious institution carefully whenever I get the chance--I constantly, nowadays, come across the name of a Mrs. Romayne. ‘The charming Mrs. Romayne and her good-looking son’ is the usual formula. It is not by any chance the little woman with whom I got myself and you into such a terrible fix years and years ago at Nice--William Romayne’s widow? Is it any relation? I should like to know what became of that little woman, if you can tell me; she had stuff in her. And whether the boy has dreed his weird yet?”