The Professor left Nevins puzzling. There was no time to be lost. He remembered now that Spalding-Wentworth had for some time been ailing. The world, in its devotion to Orson Vane, had forgotten, almost, that such a person as Spalding-Wentworth had ever existed. To be forgotten one has only to disappear. Dead men's shoes are filled nowhere so quickly as in Vanity Fair; though, to be paradoxic, for the most part they are high-heeled slippers. It took some little time, some work, to arrange what the Professor had decided must be done. He went about his plans with care and skill. He suborned Nevins easily enough, using, chiefly, the plain truth. Nevins, with the superstition of his class, was willing to believe far greater mysteries than the Professor half hinted at. By Nevins' aid it happened that Orson Vane slept, one night, face to face with the polished surface of the new mirror. In the morning it was curtained as usual. That morning Augustus Vanlief called at the Wentworth house. He asked for Mrs. Wentworth. He went to his point at once. "You know who I am, I dare say, Mrs. Wentworth. You love your husband, I am sure; you will pardon my intrusion when I tell you that perhaps I can do something the best thing of all--for him. It is, in its way, a matter of life and death. Do the doctors give you any hope?" Mrs. Wentworth, her beauty now tired and touched by traces of spoilt ambition, made a listless motion with her hands. "I don't know why I should tell you," she said, "or why I should not. They tell me vague things, the doctors do, but I don't believe they know what is the matter." "Do you?" "I?" she looked at Vanlief, and found a challenge in his regard. "It seems," she admitted, "as if--I hardly like to say it,--but it seems as if there was no soul in him any more. He is a shell, a husk. The life in him seems purely muscular. It is very depressing. Why do you think you can do anything for Clarence, Professor? I did not know your researches took you into medicine?" "Ah, but you admit this is not a matter for medicine, but for the mind. Will you allow me an experiment madame? I give you my word of honor, my honor and my reputation, that there is no risk, and there may be--perhaps, an entire restoration. There is--a certain operation that I wish to try--" "An operation? The most eminent doctors have told me such a thing would be useless. We might as well leave my poor husband clear of the knife, Professor." "Oh, it is no operation, in that sense. Nothing surgical. I can hardly explain; professional secrets are involved. If you did not know that I am but a plodding old man of science--if I were an unknown charlatan--I would not ask you to put faith in me. But--I give you my word, my promise, that if you will let Mr. Wentworth come with me in my brougham I will return with him within the hour. He will be either as he is now, or--as he once was."