“I do not think so,” she said, with a conciliatory smile which was intended to take off any edge of offence that might be found in her profession of ignorance. Then she looked at the card which he handed to her. “Perhaps this ought to be given to Brown. Ah! but now I remember. You are related to some kind people, the Lennys, who were here.” “Have the Lennys been here?” said Mr. Gus, with unfeigned surprise. “Yes, I am a relation of theirs also; but in the meantime there is a much nearer relationship.” “I am sure Mr. Gaveston,” said Lady Markham, with a smile by which she begged pardon for what she was saying, “that you will not think it rude if I leave you now. I don’t like to be long away from Sir William. When he wakes he may miss me.” “Lady Markham,” said Mr. Gus, “I wish you would let me speak to you. I do wish it indeed. It would be so much easier afterwards----” She looked at him with genuine surprise, then with a glance round her up the great staircase, where she wished to go, and round the open doors by which no one came for her deliverance, she yielded unwillingly. “I fear I can only give you a few minutes,” she said, and led the way into the library. She had done so without for the moment thinking that her husband’s room was scarcely a place in which, at this moment, to discourse placidly with a stranger on subjects of which she was ignorant. It was so full of him. His books, his papers, all arranged as if he had that moment left them; his chair at its usual angle, as if he were seated in it unseen; everything marked with the more than good order, the precision and formal regularity of all Sir William’s habits. The things which mark the little foibles of character, the innocent weaknesses of habit, are those which go most to the heart when death is threatening a member of a household. The sight of all these little _fads_, which sometimes annoyed her, and sometimes made her laugh when all was well, gave Lady Markham a shock of sudden pain and sudden _attendrissement_. Her heart had been soft enough before to her husband; it melted now in a suffusion of tender love and grief. Her eyes filled. Might it be that he never should sit at that table again? “I am sure,” she said, making once more the same instinctive appeal to the sympathy of the stranger, “that you will not detain me longer than you can help, for my husband is very ill. I cannot help being very anxious----” She could not say any more. “I am very sorry, Lady Markham--but that is the very thing that makes it so important. May I ask if it is possible you have never heard of me? Never even _heard_ of me!--that is the strangest thing of all.”