“Come, come,” Mr. Cardan protested encouragingly. “Don’t take it so hardly. I’m sorry I upset you. You mustn’t think,” he added, “that I have any of the vulgar prejudices about this affair. I’m not condemning you. Far from it. I don’t want to use your answers against you. I merely ask out of curiosity—pure curiosity. Cheer up, cheer up. Try a little more wine.” But Mr. Elver was feeling too deplorably sick to be able to think of wine without horror. He refused it, shuddering. “I didn’t mean to do anything,” he whispered. “I meant it just to happen.” “Just to happen? Yours must be a very hopeful nature,” said Mr. Cardan. “It’s in Dante, you know. My father brought us up on Dante; I loathed the stuff,” he added, as though it had been castor oil. “But things stuck in my mind. Do you remember the woman who tells how she died: ‘_Siena mi fe’, disfecemi Maremma_’? Her husband shut her up in a castle in the Maremma and she died of fever. Do you remember?” Mr. Cardan nodded. “That was the idea. I had the quinine: I’ve been taking ten grains a day ever since I arrived—for safety’s sake. But there doesn’t seem to be any fever here nowadays,” Mr. Elver added. “We’ve been here nine weeks....” “And nothing’s happened!” Mr. Cardan leaned back in his chair and roared with laughter. “Well, the moral of that,” he added, when he had breath enough to begin talking again, “the moral of that is: See that your authorities are up to date.” But Mr. Elver was past seeing a joke. He got up from his chair and stood unsteadily, supporting himself with a hand on the table. “Would you mind helping me to my room?” he faintly begged. “I don’t feel very well.” Mr. Cardan helped him first into the garden. “You ought to learn to carry your liquor more securely,” he said, when the worst was over. “That’s another of the evening’s morals.” When he had lighted his host to bed, Mr. Cardan went to his appointed room and undressed. It was a long time before he fell asleep. The mosquitoes, partly, and partly his own busy thoughts, were responsible for his wakefulness. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VIII Next morning Mr. Cardan was down early. The first thing he saw in the desolate garden before the house was Miss Elver. She was dressed in a frock cut on the same sack-like lines as her last night’s dress, but made of a gaudy, large-patterned material that looked as though it had been designed for the upholstery of chairs and sofas, not of the human figure. Her beads were more numerous and more brilliant than before. She carried a parasol of brightly flowered silk.