"My dear!--it does not matter in the least now. What is done, is done. Be careful with the grease over my work. These candles drop dreadfully, unless you hold them exactly upright. And gutter. Now give me your arm, and I will go to bed. I _think_ I shall sleep." And the worthy woman was really--if her son could only have got his eyes freed from the scales of domestic superstition, and seen it--intensely happy and exultant at this fiendish little piece of discomfort-mongering. She had scored; there was no doubt of it. She was even turning it over in her own mind whether it would not bear repetition at a future time; and quite intended, if so, to enjoy herself over it. Now the doctor was contrite and heavy at heart at his cruel conduct; walking about--just think!--and talking over his own affairs while his self-sacrificing mother was sitting in the dark, with the lamp out! To be sure there was no visible reason why she should have had it put out, except as a picturesque and imaginative way of rubbing her altruism into its nearest victim. Unless, indeed, it was done in order that the darkened window should seem to announce to the returning truant that she had gone to bed, and to lull his mind to unconsciousness of the ambush that awaited him. Anyhow, the doctor was so impressed with his own delinquency that he felt it would be impossible, the lamp having been put out, to take his mother into his confidence about his conversation with Fenwick. Which he certainly would have done--late as the hour was--if it had been left in. So he said good-night, and carried the chaos of his emotions away to bed with him, and lay awake with them till cock-crow. * * * * *