“Will you tell me just what you did inside that house, and just what you saw?” “Certainly. I was admitted, as you know, by a tall dark man who, by his dress and complexion, I should judge to be either an Arab or a North African.” “Don’t you think it strange that no attention was paid to my first knock, and that you were admitted with as many precautions as a policeman in a thieves’ kitchen?” “That was all explained to me by the young man himself, who seemed to be a very intelligent fellow.” “How? What did he say?” “He said that a lady who lodged in the house with her governess and chaperon, and who, he gave me to understand, was shortly to become his wife----” “His wife!” interrupted Lauriston, with a rush of blood to his head. “--had been frightened by an utter stranger who had by some means got into the house, and forcing himself into the presence of the young lady, who was asleep during the temporary absence of her companion, had woke her and caused her, in her alarmed attempt to escape, to set on fire the thin muslin wrapper she was wearing. Is not this substantially correct?” asked the doctor calmly. “Yes; but----” “It seemed to me quite natural that our Arabian or African friend should look upon the unexpected visit as something like an intrusion, especially as the stranger, on leaving the house, flung the aggrieved _fiancé_ headlong over the staircase of his own dwelling.” “_Fiancé_! How do you know he is her _fiancé_? You have only his word for it.” “It did not occur to me to ask for the lady’s,” said the doctor drily. “Well, but the room, the lamps and the spears and the tapestries! Her dress too! Do you have many patients dressed like that?” Dr. Bannerman looked at him again. If he had seen nothing to surprise him in his patient, he saw much in his questioner. “Her dress? Let me see; she had on a white muslin wrapper with one sleeve burnt off. No, I saw nothing astonishing in that. Her governess, a rigidly dignified Englishwoman, was with her.” “And the furniture of the room----” “Was the usual furniture of a back bedroom in the better class of London apartments.” “Oh.” A pause. Lauriston looked half relieved, half puzzled. He did not want to think that the little section of an enchanted palace, in which he had passed through such a brief but exciting experience of something altogether new and intoxicating in life, was the mere vision that his calmer reason began already to tell him it must be. “You didn’t go into the front room then?” “No.” Lauriston felt better. “But I could see into it, and there was nothing extraordinary in it.” “It was the other room,” murmured Lauriston. “Well, we are at the corner of my street, and I will wish you good-night. We professional men have to keep early hours when we can.” “Shall you call there again?” “Possibly. But, if you will take an old man’s advice, you will not.” “You will tell me why?”