Iris looked inexpressibly relieved. "Going away, at last!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Harry, if you have been mystifying me, I hope you will never do it again. It isn't like you; it's cruel to alarm me about nothing. Mr. Vimpany's empty bedroom will be the most interesting room in the house, when I look into it to-night." Lord Harry got up, and walked to the window. As a sign of trouble in his mind, and of an instinctive effort to relieve it, the object of this movement was well-known to Iris. She followed him and stood by his side. It was now plain to her that there was something more to be told--and that he was hesitating how to confide it to his wife. "Go on," she said resignedly. He had expected her to take his arm, or perhaps to caress him, or at least to encourage him by her gentlest words and her prettiest smiles. The steady self-restraint which she now manifested was a sign, as he interpreted it, of suppressed resentment. Shrinking, honestly shrinking, from the bare possibility of another quarrel, he confronted the hard necessities of further confession. "Well, now," he said, "it's only this--you mustn't look into the empty bedroom to-night." "Why not?" "Ah, for the best of all good reasons! Because you might find somebody in there." This reply excited her curiosity: her eyes rested on him eagerly. "Some friend of yours?" she asked. He persisted in an assumption of good-humour, which betrayed itself as mere artifice in the clumsiest manner: "I declare I feel as if I were in a court of justice, being cross-examined by a lawyer of skill and dexterity! Well, my sweet counsellor, no--not exactly a friend of mine." She reflected for a moment. "You don't surely mean one of Mr. Vimpany's friends?" she said. He pretended not to have heard her, and pointed to the view of the garden from the window. "Isn't it a lovely day? Let's go and look at the flowers," he suggested. "Did you not hear what I said to you just now?" she persisted. "I beg your pardon, dear; I was thinking of something else. Suppose we go into the garden?" When women have a point to gain in which they are interested, how many of them are capable of deferring it to a better opportunity? One in a thousand, perhaps. Iris kept her place at the window, resolved on getting an answer. "I asked you, Harry, whether the person who is to occupy our spare bedroom, to-night, was one of Mr. Vimpany's friends?" "Say one of Mr. Vimpany's patients--and you will be nearer the truth," he answered, with an outburst of impatience. She could hardly believe him. "Do you mean a person who is really ill?" she said. "Of course I mean it," he said; irritated into speaking out, at last. "A man? or a woman?" "A man." "May I ask if he comes from England?" "He comes from one of the French hospitals. Anything more?"