And here, in these miserable surroundings, Lady Beltham was installed on this eighteenth of December. The great lady was even paler than usual, and her eyes shone with a curious brilliance. That she was suffering from the most acute and feverish nervous excitement was patent from the way in which she kept putting her hands to her heart as though the violence of its throbbing were unendurable, and from the restless way in which she paced the room, stopping at every other step to listen for some sound to reach her through the silence of the night. Once she stepped quickly from the middle of the room to the wall opposite the door that opened on to the staircase; she pushed ajar the door of a small cupboard and murmured "hush," making a warning movement with her hands, as if addressing someone concealed there; then she moved forward again and, sinking on to the sofa, pressed her hands against her throbbing temples. "No one yet!" she murmured presently. "Oh, I would give ten years of my life to----! Is all really lost?" Her eyes wandered round the room. "What a forbidding, squalid place!" and again she sprang to her feet and paced the room. Through the grimy panes of the window she could just see a long row of roofs and chimneys outlined against the sky. "Oh, those black roofs, those horrible black roofs!" she muttered. The already wretched light in the wretched room was burning dimmer, and Lady Beltham turned up the wick of the lamp. As she did so she caught a sound and stopped. "Can that be he?" she exclaimed, and hurried to the door. "Footsteps--and a man's footsteps!" The next moment she was sure. Someone stumbled in the passage below, came slowly up the stairs, was on the landing. Lady Beltham recoiled to the sofa and sank down on it, turning her back to the door, and hiding her face in her hands. "Valgrand!" * * * * * Valgrand was a man with a passion for adventure. But invariable success in his flirtations had made him blasé, and now it was only the absolutely novel that could appeal to him. And there could certainly be no question about the woman who had sent him the present invitation being anything but a commonplace one! Moreover, it was not just any woman who had asked him to keep this assignation in the outward guise of Gurn, but the one woman in whose heart the murderer ought to inspire the greatest abhorrence, the widow of the man whom Gurn had murdered. What should his deportment be when he came face to face with her? That was what preoccupied the actor as he left the theatre, and made him dismiss the taxi in which he had started, before he reached his destination. Valgrand came into the room slowly, and with a trained eye for effect. He flung his cloak and hat theatrically on the arm-chair, and moved towards Lady Beltham, who still sat motionless with her face hidden in her hands. "I have come!" he said in deep tones.