"Quite so; but that Lady Burville should know something about your late father is something to you. Did she mention anything about it this morning?" "Not a word," he replied; "it was strange that she should not have done so." "Not stranger than that you should have been called in to attend her." "That was purely an accident." "I don't think so," said Dora deliberately; "at least, not in the face of Mr. Joad's remark." Dr. Scott looked puzzled. "What do you make out of this Lady Burville?" he asked. Before Dora could answer the question, a voice spoke to them from above. "Do not talk any more of that woman," cried Mr. Edermont with a tremor in his tones. "Come upstairs, Allen; I have something for your private ear." And then they heard the window hastily closed, as though Mr. Edermont were determined that the forthcoming conversation should be as private as possible. "Go up at once, Allen," whispered Dora, pushing him towards the door. "You speak to my guardian, and I shall question Mr. Joad about Lady Burville. Mind, you must tell me all that Mr. Edermont says to you." "There may not be anything to tell," said Allen doubtfully. Dora looked at him seriously. "I am sure that what is told will change your life and mine," she said. "Dora! you know something?" "Allen, I know nothing; I am going simply by my premonition." "I am not superstitious," said Scott, and entered the house. He was not superstitious, as he stated; yet at that moment he might well have been so, for in the mere act of ascending the stairs he was entering on a dark and tortuous path, at the end of which loomed the shadow of death. When his gray tweeds vanished up the stairs, Dora turned her eyes in the direction of Mr. Joad. He was seated in a straw chair under a cedar-tree, and looked a blot on the loveliness of the view. All else was blue sky and stretches of emerald green, golden sunshine, and multicoloured flowers; this untidy, disreputable creature, a huddled up mass of dingy black, seemed out of place. But, for all that, Dora was glad he was within speaking distance, and alone. So to speak, he was the key to the problem which was then perplexing her--the problem of her premonition.