After a pause Lauriston knocked again, regardless of the growing strength of the maledictions of the gentleman opposite. Then a shadow was seen against the curtains of one of the first-floor windows, and over the carved lattice-work a head looked out. George moved closer to the door, and left the doctor to speak. “Who is it knocking?” “It is I, Dr. Bannerman. I have been sent for to attend a young lady who has been severely burned, and if the door is not opened immediately I shall return to my house.” “Are you alone?” “Say yes. I’ll go,” said Lauriston in a low tone. “Alone? Yes.” The head disappeared, and Lauriston went a little distance down the street and crossed to the other side. He saw the door of No. 36 cautiously opened upon the chain, and then, after a few impatient words from the doctor, it was thrown wide by the man in the fez, and shut as the other entered. The young man walked up and down impatiently, never letting the house go out of sight until, after about half an hour, the doctor re-appeared, and the clank of the chain was heard as the door was bolted again behind him. “Well!” said Lauriston eagerly. “Well!” said the doctor easily. A doctor is the last sort of man to be readily astonished; but it was hardly possible that the oldest priest of the body should find himself in attendance on the entrancing mistress of an Eastern palace on the first floor of a lodging-house in Mary Street without a mild sense of passing through an unusual experience. “You--you saw her?” continued the young man, breathlessly. “Yes, and dressed the arm. Nothing at all serious; nothing to alarm anybody. She won’t be able to wear short sleeves for some time, and that’s about the worst of it.” “Unimpressive logs these doctors are,” thought Lauriston, perceiving that his marvellous Eastern lady, with all her romance-stirring surroundings, had awakened in the man of science absolutely no more interest than he would have felt in a butcher who had broken his leg. The only thing to be noted in his quiet, intelligent countenance was a deep and curious scrutiny of the face of his young companion. “You are not a friend of long standing of this lady’s, I understand?” he said, after an unobtrusive but careful examination. “Oh, no; it was by the merest accident I was in the house at all. I was given that address by mistake as that of one of my friends. Why do you ask?” “It is nothing, nothing. Your manner when you came to me was so strangely excited--in fact, it is so still--that I could not help thinking what a difference thirty years make in a man’s view of things.” “I was thinking something of the same sort. You seem to see nothing new, interesting or strange in a patient who appears to me to be the mysterious Rosamond in a labyrinth of extraordinary circumstances.” “I admit I cannot see anything extraordinary in the circumstances; moreover, I marvel at the strength of an imagination which is able to do so.”