Althea turned out the lights, and wandered out into the hall. She felt horribly lonely; with the exception of the kindly, stupid youth who had now gone to find a doctor, there was not a member of her considerable household in sufficient human sympathy with her to be called to her aid. She remembered with a pang that this question of their servants had been one of the many things concerning which there had been deep fundamental disagreement between her husband and herself. She had been accustomed to a well-ordered, decorous household, and would even have enjoyed managing such a one; but Perceval--Perceval influenced by Dockett--had ordained otherwise, and Althea had soon become uneasily aware that the order and decorum reigning below stairs were only apparent. Even now there came up from the basement the sound of loud talking, of unrestrained laughter. Suddenly someone knocked at the door, a loud double knock which stilled, as if by magic, the murmur of the voices below. Althea looked around her doubtfully, then she retreated into the darkened room, but no one came up, and she remembered that the other servants of course supposed Luke to be on duty. It might be--nay, it almost certainly was--the doctor. With faltering steps she again came out into the hall and opened the front door; and then, when she saw who it was who stood there, his kind honest eyes blinking in the sudden light, Althea began to cry. The tears ran down her cheeks; she sighed convulsively, and John Bustard, looking at her with deep concern and dismay, was quite unaware--he does not know even to this day--that it was with relief. "What is it?" he said. "My dear Mrs. Scrope--what is the matter? Would you like me to go away--or--or can I be of any use?" "Oh, yes," she said piteously. "Indeed you can be of use. Don't go away--stay with me--I'm--I'm so frightened, Mr. Bustard. Perceval--poor Perceval is--is ill, and I'm afraid to stay in there with him." And it was Mr. Bustard who at once took command--command of Althea, whom he ultimately ordered to bed; command of the excited household, whose excitement he sternly suppressed; it was Mr. Bustard who, believing he told truth, lied for Althea, first to the doctor, and later to the coroner. "How fortunate it was for poor Althea that Mr. Bustard, that nice little man in the Privy Council Office, was actually in the house when poor Perceval Scrope's death took place!" bold and cruel people would say to Mrs. Panfillen, watching the while to see how she took their mention of the dead man's name. "Yes," she would answer them quietly. "Very fortunate indeed. And it was so kind of Mr. Bustard to get his sister to go away with Althea. Poor Althea is so alone in the world. I hope she will come and stay with us when she comes back to town; we were Perceval Scrope's oldest, I might say closest, friends. You know that their marriage--his and Althea's--took place from our house?"