I have a vivid imagination, and am of an exceptionally apprehensive disposition, which has led some men to declare that I meet trouble half-way, though that is a thing I am constantly warning my friends not to do. In this case, however, I found it impossible not to feel anxious, desperately anxious, about the one woman I really cared for in the whole world. She had appealed to me urgently for help, and I was impotent to help her. Dejectedly I returned to my flat. The lift-boy was standing in the street, his hands in his pockets, the stump of a cheap cigarette between his lips. Without removing his hands from his pockets, or the cigarette-end from his mouth, he looked up at me with an offensive grin, and jerked out the sentence between his teeth-- "There's a lady here to see you--a Miss Thorold." "Miss Thorold? Where is she? How long has she been here?" I exclaimed, quelling all outward appearance of excitement. "About ten minutes. She's up in your rooms, sir. She said you knew her, and she'd wait till you came back." "Vera!" I gasped involuntarily, and entered the lift, frantic with impatience. At last. She was there--in my rooms, awaiting me with explanation! CHAPTER FIVE. PUTS CERTAIN QUESTIONS. Rarely have I felt more put out, or more bitterly disappointed, than I did when I hurried into my flat, expecting to come face to face with Vera, my beloved, and longing to take her in my arms to kiss and comfort her. Instead, I was confronted by a spinster aunt of Vera's whom I had met only three times before, and to whom I had, the first time I was introduced to her--she insisted upon never remembering me either by name or by sight, and each time needing a fresh introduction--taken an ineradicable dislike. "Ah, Mr. Ashton, I'm so glad you've come," she said without rising. "I have called to talk to you about a great many things--I daresay you can guess what they are--about all this dreadful affair at Houghton." Now the more annoyed I feel with anybody of my own social standing, the more coldly polite I invariably become. It was so on this occasion. "I should love to stay and talk to you, Miss Thorold," I answered, after an instant's pause, "but I have just been sitting at the bedside of a sick friend. To-day is the first day he has been allowed to see anybody. The doctor said he ought not to have allowed me in so soon, and he warned me to go straight home, take off every stitch of clothing I have on, and send them at once to be disinfected." "Oh, indeed?" she said rather nervously. "And what has been the matter with your friend?" It was the question I wanted. "Didn't I tell you?" I said. "It was smallpox."