Mrs. Knox had her glass of port at dessert, an act equivalent to snapping her rheumatic fingers in our faces, and withdrew, stiff but erect, and still on the best of terms with her prospective tenant. As I held the door open for her, she said to me: "''Twas whispered in heaven, 'twas muttered in hell.'" By an amazing stroke of luck I was enabled to continue: "'And echo caught softly the sound as it fell!'" with a glance at Mr. Tebbutts that showed I was aware the quotation was directed at his missing aspirates. As the door closed, the visitor turned to Flurry and said impressively: "There's just one thing, Mr. Knox, I should like to mention, if you will allow me. Are the drains quite in order?" "God knows," said Flurry, pulling hard at a badly-lighted cigarette and throwing himself into a chair by the turf fire. "Mrs. Knox's health has held out against them for about sixty years," I remarked. "Well, as to that," replied Mr. Tebbutts, "I feel it is only right to mention that the dear old lady was very giddy with me in the garden this afternoon." Flurry received this remarkable statement without emotion. "Maybe she's taken a fancy to you!" he said brutally. "If it wasn't that it was whipped cream." Mr. Tebbutts' bulging eyes sought mine in complete mystification; I turned to the fire, and to it revealed my emotions. Flurry was not at all amused. "Well--er--I understood her maid to say she 'ad bin ailing," said the guest after a pause. "I'd have called it a kind of a megrim myself, and, as I say, I certainly perceived a sort of charnel-'ouse smell in the room I'm in. And look 'ere, Mr. Knox, 'ere's another thing. 'Ow about rats? You know what ladies are; there's one of my sisters-in-law, Mrs. William Tebbutts, who'd just scream the 'ouse down if she 'eard the 'alf of what was goin' on behind the panelling in my room this evening." "Anyone that's afraid of rats had better keep out of Aussolas," said Flurry, getting up with a yawn. "Mr. Tebbutts is in the James the Second room, isn't he?" said I, idly. "Isn't that the room with the powdering-closet off it?" "It is," said Flurry. "Anything else you'd like to know?" I recognised that someone had blundered, presumably myself, and made a move for the drawing-room. Mrs. Knox had retired when we got there; my wife and Mrs. Flurry followed suit as soon as might be; and the guest said that, if the gentlemen had no objection, he thought he'd turn in too. Flurry and I shut the windows--fresh air is a foible of the female sex--heaped turf on the fire, drew up chairs in front of it, and composed ourselves for that sweetest sleep of all, the sleep that has in it the bliss of abandonment, and is made almost passionate by the deep underlying knowledge that it can be but temporary.