So saying, his lordship rang and the silent Atkinson appeared, who led us up a wide stairway and so to a dainty chamber where, bowing, he left us. A faint perfume was in the air, elusive but sweetly intimate. Upon an ottoman lay a fan and a pair of lace mittens. "Begad," murmured Anthony, sniffing, "there's nothing like perfume to give a fellow palpitations, and palpitations always make my cravat too tight--devilish thing's choking me! A good woman, Perry, can be the most doocedly alluring, devilish engaging, utterly provoking creature in creation--far more so than--t' other sort. I'm married and I know!" "Yes," said I, looking down at the discarded fan and deeply stirred by the elusive fragrance. "Devil take this cravat!" exclaimed Anthony, wrestling with it before a mirror. "If they don't come soon, 't will be wreck, demmit! I wish to heaven they'd come." "So do I, Anthony!" "Finishing touches, I expect, Perry--they will do it! And mean to surprise us, of course." But as moment after moment elapsed, his impatience grew. "I wonder what's keeping 'em!" he exclaimed. "I wonder!" said I. At the end of ten minutes he was striding up and down the room in a very ferment. "Damned strange!" he muttered. "Devilish incomprehensible! They must know we're here. Been waiting fifteen minutes now, begad! Getting beyond a joke--deuced exasperating, Perry, y' know. Dammit, man, why can't you say something, do something, instead of sitting there so devilish calm and serene, staring before you like an infernal sphinx?" At the end of twenty minutes Anthony could wait no more and bidding me follow, jerked open the door and strode out. But I sat there staring before me at an empty fireplace and still all my thought was of the chaise with the red wheels. But presently my gaze came by chance upon something that lay in a corner of the hearth, a piece of paper crumpled and rent as in passionate haste. For a while I viewed it idly, heedlessly, then all at once I saw a name, a scrawling signature plain to read; next moment the fragment of paper was in my grasp and I read this: ... confess to find you more bewitchingly beautiful than ever. And therefore, having regard to what transpired between us in Italy, you will come this evening without fail to Your ever adoring slave and master, HAREDALE. How long I remained staring at this fragment of paper I do not know, but I started suddenly to see Atkinson bowing in the doorway and followed him from the room and downstairs and suddenly found myself in a polite tumult; silks rustled, feathers nodded, turbans bowed and jewels glittered. But almost at once, amid all this throng, my eyes saw but one. Tall she was, with jewels that sparkled in her dark and lustrous hair; how she was gowned I cannot remember, but her white throat was unadorned save for a small gold chain whence hung a plain gold locket, at sight of which my heart seemed to swell within me.