What Laurence Alsager had to bear, and how he bore it, was not for any one to see. He held himself aloof even from the gentle scrutiny he had so little reason to dread. In half-an-hour Dr. Galton reentered Sir Peregrine's room, looking very grave, and requested Mrs. Chisholm and Helen to withdraw. "I am going to let Colonel Alsager see his father," he said; "and I think there should be no one else by. We can never know exactly how much or how little the patient feels, or knows, or is affected in eases like these; but one at a time is an admirable rule." "He will find us in the long drawing-room when he wishes to see us," said Mrs. Chisholm; and then she and Helen left the room, and went in silence along the wide corridor, and down the broad flat staircase of fine white stone, with its narrow strip of velvet-pile carpeting and its heavy, carved balustrade, terminated by a fierce figure in armour holding a glittering spear, with a mimic banderol blazoned with the device of the Alsagers. The wide stone hall, at the opposite extremity of which the door of the long drawing-room stood open, the heavy velvet _portière_ withdrawn, was hung with trophies of the chase and of war. Tiger-skins, buffalo-horns, the _dépouilles_ of the greater and the lesser animals which man so loves to destroy, adorned its walls, diversified by several handsome specimens of Indian arms, and a French helmet, pistol, and sabretache. Four splendid wood-carvings, representing such scenes as Snyders has painted, were conspicuous among the orthodox ornaments of the hall. They were great favourites with Sir Peregrine, who had bought them in one of the old Belgian cities on the one only occasion when he had visited foreign parts--an awful experience, to which he had been wont to allude with mingled pride and repugnance. Helen glanced at them sadly as she crossed the hall; then turned her head carelessly in the direction of the great door, which stood open, and before which a huge black Newfoundland lay at full length upon the marble steps. At the same moment the dog, whose name was Faust, rose, wagged his tail, twitched his ears, and cantered down the steps, and across the terrace in an oblique direction. "Who is that, Helen?" asked Mrs. Chisholm, as she caught sight of Faust's swift-vanishing form. "Some one is coming whom the dog knows." "It is only Mr. Farleigh," answered Helen; but her reply must have been made quite at random, for she had not advanced another step in the direction of the door, and could not possibly have seen, from her position in the hall, who was approaching the house at that moment.