"Then Lettice Lane must have gone roving again--unless you are mistaken," said Cattledon, severely. "Wanting country air, forsooth! Change was what _she_ wanted." Handing over Miss Cattledon, when we arrived, to the care of Janet, who took her upstairs, and told me tea would be ready soon, I went into Mr. Tamlyn's sitting-room. He was in the easy-chair before the fire, dozing, but opened his eyes at my entrance. "Visitor come all right, Johnny?" "Yes, sir; she is gone to take her cloaks off. Janet says tea is nearly ready." "I am quite ready for it," he remarked, and shut his eyes again. I took up a book I was reading, "Martin Chuzzlewit," and sat down on the broad window-seat, legs up, to catch the now fading light. The folds of the crimson curtain lay between me and Mr. Tamlyn--and I only hoped Mrs. Gamp would not send me into convulsions and disturb him. Presently Dr. Knox came in. He went up to the fire, and stood at the corner of the mantelpiece, his elbow on it, his back to me; and old Tamlyn woke up. "Well," began he, "what was the matter at Cooper's, Arnold?" "Eldest boy fell off a ladder and broke his arm. It is only a simple fracture." "Been very busy to-day, Arnold?" "Pretty well." "Hope I shall be out again in a day or two. How did you find Lady Jenkins?" "Not at all to my satisfaction. She was in bed, and--and in fact seemed hardly to know me." Tamlyn said nothing to this, and a silence ensued. Dr. Knox broke it. He turned his eyes from the fire on which they had been fixed, and looked full at his partner. "Has it ever struck you that there's not quite fair play going on up there?" he asked in a low tone. "Up where?" "With Lady Jenkins." "How do you mean, Arnold?" "That something is being given to her?" Tamlyn sat upright in his chair, pushed back his scanty hair, and stared at Dr. Knox. "_What_ do you mean, Knox? What do you suspect?" "That she is being habitually drugged; gradually, slowly----" "Merciful goodness!" interrupted Tamlyn, rising to his feet in excitement. "Do you mean slowly poisoned?" "Hush!--I hear Janet," cried Dr. Knox. LADY JENKINS. DOUBT. I. You might have heard a pin drop in the room. They were listening to the footsteps outside the door, but the footsteps did not make the hush and the nameless horror that pervaded it: the words spoken by Dr. Knox had done that. Old Tamlyn stood, a picture of dismay. For myself, sitting in the window-seat, my feet comfortably stretched out before me, and partially sheltered by the red curtains, I could only gaze at them both. Janet's footsteps died away. She appeared to have been crossing the hall to the tea-room. And they began to talk again. "I do not say that Lady Jenkins is being poisoned; absolutely, deliberately poisoned," said Dr. Knox, in the hushed tones to which his voice had dropped; "I do not yet go quite so far as that. But I do think that she is in some way being tampered with." "In what way?" gasped Tamlyn. "Drugged."