Dolff could not speak. He stared dully at his questioner, unable to reply. The sound of the outer door pushed open, and men’s footsteps upon the path, came in like a sort of horrible accompaniment and explanation. The perspiration stood in great beads on Dolff’s forehead. He tried to make a bolt at the passage to the garden, which led by the open door of the kitchen. Then he drew himself up against the wall, in a half stupor, as if he could conceal himself so. “Is it life or death?” said Vicars, in his ear; but Dolff could not speak. He had a dim vision of the man’s face, of the light swimming in his eyes, of the knock upon the door of the house, ominous, awful, like a knell; and then he suddenly found himself drawn into darkness, into a warm, close atmosphere, beyond the reach of that, or apparently of any other sound. Priscilla, always correct, but a little surprised, not knowing how to account for such an invasion of the drawing-room, ushered in the detective, accompanied by a man in a shabby coat, very inappropriate certainly to that locality. Mr. Dolff had always spoken to such men in the hall. A parlor-maid is, above all things, an aristocrat. To have to introduce two such persons to her mistress’s presence offended her in her deepest sense of right and wrong. “Is this the man?” said Meredith. “Mrs. Harwood, do you think we might have a little light?” “Priscilla is bringing in the lamps,” said Mrs. Harwood, looking with a little suspicion and annoyance at the men, who certainly were much out of place: a feeling that there was danger in them somehow, though she could not tell how, crept into her mind. She looked anxiously at the dim figures looming against the light, and a thrill of alarm went through her. Why did Charley insist on having them here? Why did not Dolff see them in the hall, as he had done before? She had never had a policeman in her house; never, except--Trouble and tremor came over her as she sat there growing breathless in her chair. As for Gussy, she was insensible to every appeal, to every claim upon her attention but one. She was Meredith’s sick-nurse, watching lest he should be over-fatigued, thinking of nothing else. There was no help or support in her for her mother’s anxieties. When the lamps were brought in matters were no better. A sort of Rembrandt-like depth of shadow fell upon the two strange figures, throwing a blackness over the tea-table at which Janet was sitting, and showing only the form of Meredith in his chair, which was full within the influence of the shaded light, and the awkward attitudes of the two men in the middle of the room. “So this is the man who saw me--knocked down?” said Meredith. His face, which was the central light in that strange picture, was lit up with what seemed more like malicious fun than any other sentiment. “And you think you could identify the fellow who did it? Is that so?”