‘Be sure of that. This change of rooms is a foolish fancy: but I am too feeble to dispute the point. Good-night.’ He dismissed them both with a wave of his hand—the grandchild who represented the sum-total of his kindred, and the man to whom he had bequeathed his fortune. Lucille and Lucius went down-stairs together, but both were curiously silent. The surgeon’s mind was full of that strange conversation with Homer Sivewright; the girl had a preoccupied air. In the dimly-lighted hall she paused, by the open door of the sitting-room, where Mrs. Wincher had just put down the little tray with her young mistress’s meagre supper. ‘Will you come into the parlour for a little while, Lucius?’ she asked, as her lover lingered on the threshold with an undecided air. Something unfamiliar in the tone of her voice jarred upon his ear. ‘You ask the question almost as if you wished me to say no, Lucille,’ he said. ‘I am rather tired,’ she answered faintly, ‘and I am sure you must be tired too, you have been so long up-stairs with grandpapa. It has struck ten.’ ‘That sounds like my dismissal,’ said Lucius, scrutinising the pale face, in which there was a troubled expression that he had never seen there until of late; ‘so I will say good-night, though I had something to tell you, had you been inclined to listen.’ ‘Tell me all to-morrow, Lucius.’ ‘It shall be to-morrow then, dearest. Good-night.’ And thus with one tender kiss he left her. CHAPTER IV. WHAT LUCIUS SAW BETWIXT MIDNIGHT AND MORNING. The sky was starless above the Shadrack-road, and the air hardly less oppressive than it had been in the sultry noontide. That low sky seemed to shut in the Shadrack district like an iron roof, and the Shadrackites lounging against their doorposts, or conversing at street corners, or congregating in small clusters outside public-houses, bemoaned themselves that the storm had not yet come. Lucius left Cedar House heavy-hearted, in spite of the knowledge that he, who yesterday knew not of a creature in this universe likely to leave him a five-pound note, was to-night heir to a handsome fortune. The thought of Mr. Sivewright’s generosity in no manner elated him. Had his mind been free to contemplate this fact he would, no doubt, have rejoiced in the new sense of security which such a prospect must have inspired; he would have rejoiced not alone for himself, but for the sake of the woman who was to be his wife. Through the thick tangle of his troubled thoughts no gleam of light could penetrate. He saw himself the centre of perplexities. It seemed almost as if the avenging shade of the man he had slain were hunting him down—tempting him to entangle himself by some foolish confession, urging him to some folly that must bring about his own destruction. He thought of Orestes pursued by the Eumenides—tortured by the burden of a crime which, at the hour of its commission, he had deemed an act of justice.