"I am sure you will insist upon nothing of the kind, Thomas," said Lady Thorne, entering in her handsome, sober black dinner-dress, redeemed from too great plainness by the diamond pins in the black lace head-dress crowning her iron-grey hair, and the pearl and diamond necklet and brooches around and about her lace-encircled throat, and seeming to bring in a matter-of-fact atmosphere from the outer world of ordinary commonplace, which jarred upon and supported Joan at one and the same time. "Joan has nothing the matter with her but a little neuralgia. She wants a good long sleep, and she will be as well as ever to-morrow morning. You leave her to me, and don’t meddle with what you men, however clever you may be, know nothing about!" And Lady Thorne, who remembered her own girlish "attacks" during her love anxieties, and who had no mind for visits from a doctor who might order change of air and nip the engagement with Lord Vansittart in the bud, bustled her husband off, and administered a tonic to her niece in the form of a good-humoured scolding. "Men always want to make mountains out of mole-hills, doctors too--they are all alike!" she ended by saying, after she had chidden her for not forcing herself to eat and drink. "You did not sleep! Of course not! Well, I promise you you shall to-night!" She rang for some clear soup and wine, coaxed Joan to consume both, then, after herself "seeing her to bed" and administering a good dose of chloral--a drug she had in her amateur medical studies found was in the opinion of certain authorities antidotal where there was a consumptive tendency--sat by her until she was asleep. And Joan slept--heavily. Only towards morning was her slumber visited by dreams. The one which arrived with the grey dawn, when the birds began to chirp in the trees below, was almost a nightmare. She dreamt that she was a prisoner in the dock, being tried for the wilful murder of Victor Mercier, alias a’Court. The jury were filing back into the box amid an awful silence in the crowded court. She saw each one of her twelve umpires, scanned each sober, serious face, with a horrible presage of coming doom. She heard the sentence--"Are you all agreed upon your verdict?" and the reply--the terrible fiat, "Guilty." She saw the wizened features of the aged judge in his scarlet panoply assume a grim and solemn expression, as, donning the three-cornered "black cap"--a head-covering which gave him a grotesque, masquerading appearance--he addressed her. At first she was too dazed to understand; then, the concluding adjuration seemed to smite her ears, and stab her heart.