“Will you give me five minutes?” he asked, feebly and wearily, without raising his head. “You know already how any reference to events at Gleninch excites and shakes me. I shall be fit for it again, if you will kindly give me a few minutes to myself. There are books in the next room. Please excuse me.” I at once retired to the circular antechamber. He followed me in his chair, and closed the door between us. CHAPTER XXIX. IN THE LIGHT. A LITTLE interval of solitude was a relief to me, as well as to Miserrimus Dexter. Startling doubts beset me as I walked restlessly backward and forward, now in the anteroom, and now in the corridor outside. It was plain that I had (quite innocently) disturbed the repose of some formidable secrets in Miserrimus Dexter’s mind. I confused and wearied my poor brains in trying to guess what the secrets might be. All my ingenuity--as after-events showed me--was wasted on speculations not one of which even approached the truth. I was on surer ground when I arrived at the conclusion that Dexter had really kept every mortal creature out of his confidence. He could never have betrayed such serious signs of disturbance as I had noticed in him, if he had publicly acknowledged at the Trial, or if he had privately communicated to any chosen friend, all that he knew of the tragic and terrible drama acted in the bedchamber at Gleninch. What powerful influence had induced him to close his lips? Had he been silent in mercy to others? or in dread of consequences to himself? Impossible to tell! Could I hope that he would confide to Me what he had kept secret from Justice and Friendship alike? When he knew what I really wanted of him, would he arm me, out of his own stores of knowledge, with the weapon that would win me victory in the struggle to come? The chances were against it--there was no denying that. Still the end was worth trying for. The caprice of the moment might yet stand my friend, with such a wayward being as Miserrimus Dexter. My plans and projects were sufficiently strange, sufficiently wide of the ordinary limits of a woman’s thoughts and actions, to attract his sympathies. “Who knows,” I thought to myself, “if I may not take his confidence by surprise, by simply telling him the truth?” The interval expired; the door was thrown open; the voice of my host summoned me again to the inner room. “Welcome back!” said Miserrimus Dexter. “Dear Mrs. Valeria, I am quite myself again. How are you?”