“After a little talk with the under-housemaid, I returned to the bedroom. No one was there. Mrs. Macallan was lying perfectly quiet, with her face turned away from me on the pillow. Approaching the bedside, I kicked against something on the floor. It was a broken tea-cup. I said to Mrs. Macallan, ‘How comes the tea-cup to be broken, ma’am?’ She answered, without turning toward me, in an odd, muffled kind of voice, ‘I dropped it.’ ‘Before you drank your tea, ma’am?’ I asked. ‘No,’ she said; ‘in handing the cup back to Mr. Macallan, after I had done.’ I had put my question, wishing to know, in case she had spilled the tea when she dropped the cup, whether it would be necessary to get her any more. I am quite sure I remember correctly my question and her answer. I inquired next if she had been long alone. She said, shortly, ‘Yes; I have been trying to sleep.’ I said, ‘Do you feel pretty comfortable?’ She answered, ‘Yes,’ again. All this time she still kept her face sulkily turned from me toward the wall. Stooping over her to arrange the bedclothes, I looked toward her table. The writing materials which were always kept on it were disturbed, and there was wet ink on one of the pens. I said, ‘Surely you haven’t been writing, ma’am?’ ‘Why not?’ she said; ‘I couldn’t sleep.’ ‘Another poem?’ I asked. She laughed to herself--a bitter, short laugh. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘another poem.’ ‘That’s good,’ I said; ‘it looks as if you were getting quite like yourself again. We shan’t want the doctor any more to-day.’ She made no answer to this, except an impatient sign with her hand. I didn’t understand the sign. Upon that she spoke again, and crossly enough, too--‘I want to be alone; leave me.’ “I had no choice but to do as I was told. To the best of my observation, there was nothing the matter with her, and nothing for the nurse to do. I put the bell-rope within reach of her hand, and I went downstairs again. “Half an hour more, as well as I can guess it, passed. I kept within hearing of the bell; but it never rang. I was not quite at my ease--without exactly knowing why. That odd, muffled voice in which she had spoken to me hung on my mind, as it were. I was not quite satisfied about leaving her alone for too long a time together--and then, again, I was unwilling to risk throwing her into one of her fits of passion by going back before she rang for me. It ended in my venturing into the room on the ground-floor called the Morning-Room, to consult Mr. Macallan. He was usually to be found there in the forenoon of the day. “On this occasion, however, when I looked into the Morning-Room it was empty.