"We were married quite early, in the little Alverstoke church. I used to hate it when I went there Sunday after Sunday; but it was a new place to me that morning, holy and beautiful, all in the dewy freshness, grey amid the green, with stripes of sunlight yellow upon it, and the dancing shadows of the trees. The whole church was full of the smell of white narcissus; it was like incense. When I came up the nave, he turned where he stood at the altar rail, and looked at me. I can see him now, just as he looked; his eyes dark, dark, and his face quite pale for all it was so bronzed. Baby, I can smell the narcissus now, as I stood beside him and he put this on my finger." She raised her hand and kissed the ring. "I shall never take it off," she said, as if to herself. And unhappy, practical Baby, could have laughed and cried together with the despairing ejaculation: "Poor Runkle!" The night was pressing up against the windows; only the firelight now fought the darkness in the wainscoted room. Upon the panel opposite the bed, the life-size portrait of Captain English, in its strong relief of black and white, began to assume a ruddy tint; in the shifting of the shadows the expression of the face seemed to change. It assumed startling airs of life. Baby caught sight of this and gave a faint scream. "Oh, oh," she said, burrowing her face against Rosamond’s neck, "he almost looks alive!" Lady Gerardine had seen, too; but there was no terror in her soul. "Why should he not look alive?" said she, in a soft confidential whisper, "he’s not really dead, you know." The astounding words had scarcely fallen upon Baby’s alarmed consciousness, when there was a crunching of wheels below the window, as if the night without had suddenly engendered some ghostly visitor in state. A violent peal rang through the silent house; a new but very tangible fear was upon Aspasia. With a shriek she sprang to her feet. "As sure as eggs is eggs, it’s Runkle!" She rushed helter-skelter to the door, while Rosamond sat still, clasping her ringed finger. A minute later Aspasia burst into the room again. She was laughing violently in reaction, and brought a breath as of wet woods and winter winds into the warm room. "It’s all right," she gasped. "It isn’t Runkle, aunt, it’s only——" with a fresh irrepressible gust, "it’s only the ’native spring,’ you know, the black man—the secretary who’s writing up Runkle’s monument!" She leaned against the bed-post, puffing and fanning herself with her handkerchief. "What a turn he’s given me—poor thing! I’m glad we’ve got Jani for him. He looked so forlorn, standing in the hall, staring about him with great sad eyes, like something pitchforked into a different world." * * * * * Jani carried a lamp into the small bare chamber allotted to Muhammed Saif-u-din, and set it on the table at which he was seated.