Some two months later there was again a little dinner party at 'Meldona,' Mr. Kingsford's residence, and the same faces were gathered round the hospitable board--all but Leonard Elwood's. Maud looked charming and happy as she glanced, now and again, first at Jack Templemore's bronzed face, and then at her brother, listening, not for the first time now, to her lover's wondrous tale. She and Stella had shuddered before at the accounts of the great tree and its victims, and of the horrors of the 'haunted wood'; and had talked of Ulama and Zonella, and wondered, again and again, what they were like. "Poor Leonard! I am sorry to lose him," Maud said. "Yet, I suppose, he does not need pity; for he is to be envied in many ways. Fancy his dreamings--about which we used to tease him so--coming true after all!" "It is just a year ago to-day," observed Mr. Kingsford to the doctor, "that you were at dinner here and first told us about that wondrous stranger, Monella. We've had an anxious time ever since." "I have never known a happy moment till you all came back the other day," said Maud sadly. "I am so thankful that the cruel suspense is ended at last. I have often recalled the words Dr. Lorien used about Roraima; that 'its very name had come to be surrounded by a halo of dread and indefinable fear.' I can truly declare that it has been so with me. I, too, had come to hate and dread the very name. It has seemed to me like a great, remorseless ogre that had swallowed up two of our friends, and, as I feared, was going to swallow up my brother and two more. Yet," she added, looking at Jack, "had I known how things really were, had I known of your lying lamed, and ill, and alone in the den in that horrible forest, I think I should have gone mad! What a comfort to you this dear, faithful animal must have been!" 'Nea' was by her side, and she put her tear-stained face affectionately down to the animal's head. The big puma had already established herself as a favourite with every one in the house. "Truly," returned Jack, "such thoughts occurred to me while I was cooped up there. I couldn't help going over things in my mind; and, when I considered how the mountain itself, and all the horrors of the forest, seemed to have combined against me to prevent my escape, I was seized with a sort of hate and detestation of the place. And, ever since, my sleep has been disturbed--and will be for years to come, I feel convinced--by nightmare dreams of the sights and sounds that haunt my memory!" "I feel that I have a grudge against it, too," the doctor avowed. "Consider all the wonderful things you have told us that are to be found inside! Then, just when I got so near, to be shut out in that way! That 'Plant of Life,' too! I'd have given a good deal to have some specimens of that, and some seeds. _I_ would have got them to grow, somehow, if the thing could be done!"