As she spoke a curtain swung back, and one entered in the guise of a Saracen; turbaned and bedecked with many precious stones. He passed round the room by the wall; not until he reached the further door did I observe his face. It was the most terrible I had ever seen. Heavy brows leaned over green and yellow eyes: the skin was puckered in huge wrinkles: a few silver hairs swayed from his chin. His mouth was loathsome; by some preternatural means the lips had been drawn almost to the ears, and in the gulfed space lay a hedge of black teeth, which being opened--the jaw hanging loosely on his breast--showed me in that short space that the tongue was missing, and its place taken by some white snake-like roots. At the door he made his obeisance, accompanying it with a hoarse, frightful sound. ‘It is Sir Humphreville’s mute eunuch,’ she said frowning. ‘He has the leave of the house. My lord bought him from the Soldan. He is reputed to have stores of forbidden knowledge--Sir Humphreville sets a high value on him: they work for hours in the laboratory together.’ When the creature had gone she laid her hand on my arm. ‘I have a fond belief that yonder gelding pollutes the air. Let us sit in my own chamber: there at least he is forbidden to enter.’ She accompanied me to a cabinet furnished in the richest, most extravagant fashion. The walls, where not hung with white satin, were of alabaster, fretted with moresks of finely-beaten gold; the ceiling, also of white, but pierced with a crescent moon and stars that by some arrangement of changing mirrors and lights glittered more brightly than the real firmament. Tripods of silver with smouldering spills sent out dainty clouds that massed beneath this mock sky and filtered through its orifices. There we sat and discoursed of our lives. She had heard of my fame; had even seen one of my comedies at White Hall. She made no attempt to glose, but begged for information as simply as a begging child. When I had told her all, she began to relate her own history since her marriage. Sir Humphreville (whom, as I had already noted, she spoke of in a constrained fashion) had returned from the Continent in her sixteenth year to take possession. The Earl of Dorel had died meanwhile; and her husband, after a year of quiet life, had been appointed ambassador to Naples. There she had passed three unhappy years, the women of Italy not being companionable, and Sir Humphreville overmuch engrossed in his philosophical researches. After that they had resided in England; at divers seats of the Campions; and now, Sir Humphreville being called to the Court, where he was in high favour because of his proposal to turn all the copper of the kingdom into gold, he had bought the house at Hampstead. Day by day, she said, he worked with the king in the royal laboratory.