“Now, Alice, you may come in!” The handle turned, and the housekeeper entered. “How is Miss Burnside?” he asked, in the same silvery accents. (He had told Margaret that she had better be known by that name, for the present at least.) “She is asleep. I hope she may never waken. What do you want with her? Why are you keeping her in this house? What devil’s brew have you been making that smells of gas and sherry and sealing-wax?” “My dear girl,” replied Mr. Cranley, “you put too many questions at once. As to your first pair of queries, my reasons for taking care of Miss Burnside are my own business, and do not concern you, as my housekeeper. As to the ‘devil’s brew’ which you indicate in a style worthy rather of the ages of Faith and of Alchemy, than of an epoch of positive science, did you never taste sherry and sealing-wax? If you did not, that is one of the very few alcoholic combinations in which you have never, to my knowledge, attempted experiments. Is there any other matter on which I can enlighten an intelligent and respectful curiosity?” The fair woman’s blue eyes and white face seemed to glitter with anger, like a baleful lightning. “I don’t understand your chaff,” she said, with a few ornamental epithets, which, in moments when she was deeply stirred, were apt to decorate her conversation. “I grieve to be obscure,” he answered; “_brevis esse laboro_, the old story. But, as you say Miss Burnside is sleeping, and as, when she wakens, she may be feverish, will you kindly carry these oranges and leave them on a plate by her bedside? They are Jaffa oranges, and finer fruit, Alice, my dear, I have seldom tasted! After that, go to Cavendish Square, and leave this note at the doctor’s.” “Oh, nothing’s too good for _her!_” growled the jealous woman, thinking of the fruit; to which he replied by offering her several of the oranges not used in his experiment. Bearing these, she withdrew, throwing a spiteful glance and leaving the door unshut, so that her master distinctly heard her open Margaret’s door, come out again, and finally leave the house. “Now, I’ll give her a quarter of an hour to waken,” said Mr. Cranley, and he took from his pocket a fresh copy of the _Times_. He glanced rather anxiously at the second column of the outer sheet “Still advertising for him,” he said to himself; and he then turned to the sporting news. His calmness was extraordinary, but natural in him; for the reaction of terror at the possible detection of his villainy had not yet come on. When he had read all that interested him in the _Times_, he looked hastily at his watch. “Just twenty minutes gone,” he said. “Time she wakened--and tried those Jaffa oranges.”