"You’ll have something?" she suggested. "I’m just going to get my sister a little brandy, and I’ll get you a whisky and soda." "No, thanks—all the same," Gerald replied. "The fact is I never drink whisky." "Then a glass of port wine," she laughed gaily. "You won’t refuse that—have it, to please me, won’t you?" He tried to protest, but she overruled him, and in the end he was forced to accept the glass of wine which a few minutes later she brought him upon a small silver salver, together with her sister’s liqueur glass of old brandy. She took nothing herself, but stood chatting as Durrant and her sister sipped their glasses. "That’s some very old port that was lately given to me by a friend," she explained. "Being a woman, I know nothing of wines, but we had a man dining here with us the other night who pronounced it first-class." "Yes," Gerald said. "It is excellent, though I, too, have no knowledge of wines, which I always think is generally pretended save in the case of men with acute palates who are in the import trade. The man who to-day can sip a glass and tell its vintage is a _rara avis_," he declared. Mrs. Evans agreed with him. She watched him drain his glass with satisfaction, and then urged him to have a second one. But he refused, for, as a matter of fact, he found a strange sensation creeping over him. Though he did not mention it, being too polite, he felt across his eyes a slow, but increasing, blindness. Objects seemed to be receding from his gaze. The muscles of his throat seemed to be contracting, and he felt his cheeks hot and flushed. He tried to stir himself in his chair, but he seemed paralysed. He could not move! He endeavoured to speak, to tell the two ladies of his sudden seizure, but his tongue refused to articulate a word. In his desperate efforts to ask them to call assistance, his hands pawed the air convulsively, and then, of a sudden, he felt himself collapsing, and all became blank. Meanwhile the two women were watching him intently, and the instant they satisfied themselves that he was unconscious, Miss Mayne—who was really Lilla Braybourne, sat where she was, while Mrs. Evans, who was Ena Pollen, the Red Widow—jumped up from her chair, saying eagerly: "All’s well up till now! I must tell Bernie." She dashed to the telephone, and, asking for a number, spoke rapidly: "Lilla speaking," she said. "Bernie. He’s here, and he’s been taken suddenly ill. You’d better come round at once." She listened. Then she said: "Right—you’ll get here in a quarter of an hour. He’s asleep now!" Then the pretended invalid and her pseudo-sister, leaving Gerald in the drawing-room, where he had collapsed so suddenly after drinking the glass of "doctored" port, went into the dining-room and mixed themselves a stiff brandy and soda each. Afterwards the Red Widow, descending to where the taxi was waiting, gave the man another ten shillings, and said: