If Rahas had just visited Nouna, as George suspected, he must have followed her from the church to her new home, as George had told no one the address till after his wedding. Then how had he timed his departure so as just to escape meeting her husband? And then again came the question which had puzzled him at the church: How did Rahas know at what time and at what church Nouna would be married? He took out the latch-key for which, with an old bachelor instinct, he had at once asked the landlady on taking the rooms, fitted it with an unsteady hand into the door, and let himself in. Just inside he caught sight of his face in the narrow strip of glass that filled the middle beam of the hat-stand, and was struck by his own pallor, and by the stern expression of his features. “By Jove!” he said to himself, trying to laugh, and finding with surprise that he was quite cold, and that his teeth were chattering, “here’s a pretty face for a bridegroom. If I were to give Nouna, my poor little Nouna, my first kiss with lips as blue as that,” and he peered at himself mockingly close to the glass, “she’d think she’d married a corpse.” And he pulled himself together, drew down the ends of his moustache, and rearranged his light satin tie, telling himself that he had been a fool to chase the fellow at all instead of going straight to Nouna to learn whether the wretch had really called and attempted to annoy her. But a blight had fallen upon his ecstatic happiness, and he broke off in an attempt to sing as he ran up stairs to the first floor. As he went he heard voices, which ceased suddenly when his footsteps sounded on the landing; then there was a slight rustling, and a noise as of something thrown over in a hurry. He considered a moment, and then, the key of the bedroom door being on the outside, he quietly turned it in the lock before entering the sitting-room. CHAPTER XIII.