"Well," he said, "on the spur of the moment it seemed the only thing to do. . . . There is somebody in the next room. May I shut the door?" "It's only my maid," said Madame de Montevesso. "She couldn't hear us from there." "Well, then perhaps we had better leave the door as it is. It's best to avoid all appearance of secrecy." The doctor was thinking of Count Helion, but Madame de Montevesso made no sign. The doctor lowered his voice still more. "I wanted to ask you if you had seen him yesterday--last night. No? But he may have called without your knowledge." She admitted that it was possible. People had been sent away from the door on account of her father's illness. There had been no reception in the evening. But Mr. Latham would have asked for her. She thought she would have been told. The doctor suggested that Mr. Latham might have asked for the Count. Madame de Montevesso had only seen her husband for a moment in her father's bedroom the day before, and not at all yet this day. For all she knew he may have been away for the day on a visit in the country. "But I know nothing of his interests, really," she said in a little less deadened voice. She could not explain to the doctor that she was a stranger in that house; an unwilling visitor with an unsympathetic host whose motives one cannot help suspecting. Beyond the time she spent by arrangement every year at Count de Montevesso's country house she knew nothing of his life. What could have been the motives which brought him to Genoa, she had and could have not the slightest idea. She only felt that she ought not to have accepted his pressing invitation to this hired palazzo. But then she could not have come with her father to Genoa. And yet he could not have done without her. And indeed it seemed but a small thing. The alarming thought crossed her mind that, all unwittingly, she had taken a fatal step. The doctor, who had quite an accurate notion of the state of affairs, hastened to say: "After all, I don't know that this is of any importance. I have heard that Mr. Latham was busy writing all yesterday. If he had come to Italy with some sort of purpose," he continued as if arguing with himself, "one could . . ." Then sharply: "You couldn't tell me anything, could you?" he asked Adèle. "This is the first time I have seen him for ten years." Madame de Montevesso raised her eyes, full of trouble, to the doctor's face. "Since we were children together in Yorkshire. We talked of old times. Only of old times," she repeated. "Of course--very natural," mumbled the doctor. He made the mental remark that one did not disappear like this after talking of old times. And aloud he said, "I suppose Mr. Latham made the acquaintance of Count de Montevesso." "Certainly." "I presume that they had an opportunity to have a conversation together."