"Ah, yes," he murmured. "Very distressing! Most distressing!" He looked vaguely round the room; and Gallagher, as if anticipating his thought, pulled out his watch. Milbanke rose quickly. "I thank you very much, Doctor Molyneaux," he said, "for your--your valuable opinion. I think Miss Asshlin wishes to know if your train will permit you to partake of some dinner before you leave us?" Molyneaux smiled with the air of a man who has put an unpleasant duty aside. "Ah, thank you!" he said suavely. "Thank you! If Doctor--Gallagher gives me permission I shall be charmed. He understands your local time-tables, and has promised that I shall catch the night mail to Dublin." He smiled again and glanced genially round the firelit room. "What interesting family portraits our poor friend possesses!" he added with pleasant affability. But Milbanke did not seem to hear. "If you will excuse me for a moment," he said hastily, "I will see that you are caused no unnecessary delay. You can understand that we--that we are a somewhat demoralised household." His voice was agitated, his step uneven as he crossed the room and passed into the hall. Molyneaux followed him with a conventional glance of sympathy; then his eyes turned again to the pictures with the gratified glance of a dilettante. "Do you happen to know if this is a Reynolds?" he said to Gallagher, rising and crossing the room. CHAPTER IV To the last day of his life, that evening, with its horde of harassing and unfamiliar sensations, remained stamped upon Milbanke's mind; and not least among the unpleasant recollections was the visit of Molyneaux, and the dinner at which he himself unwillingly played host. It may have been that his usually placid susceptibilities had undergone a strain that rendered him over sensitive; but whatever the cause, the atmosphere diffused by the great man jarred upon him. In his eyes, it seemed little short of callous that one who had just passed sentence of death upon his patient could so far remain unmoved as to partake with relish of the dinner set before him, and comment with affable appreciation upon the quality of the patient's wines. Milbanke spoke little during the course of that meal. Try as he might to enact the part entrusted to him, his thoughts persistently wandered to the room upstairs, with its doomed sufferer and its anxious watchers, as yet mercifully ignorant of the verdict that had been pronounced. But if the host was silent, the guests made conversation. Gallagher was assiduous in his attentions to the man who, in his eyes, stood for the attainment of all ambition; and Molyneaux--under the unlooked-for stimulus of good, if homely food and wines that even as an epicure he admitted to be remarkable--was graciously pleased to accept the homage of his humble colleague, and to display a suave glimpse of the polished wit for which he was noted in society.