A fortnight of incessant, imminent anxiety passed slowly by; then came a night when, taking his way to the corner house after dinner, Lessing experienced his first tangible alarm. The square was empty of pedestrians; he was walking on the farther side, close to the tall shuttered houses, when through the shrubs behind the railing of the centre enclosure, the lamplight showed a glimpse of a white face peering towards him. The next second it had disappeared, but even as he walked he had a conviction that a crouching figure kept pace behind that leafy screen. He hurried his steps, the figure kept pace; he could hear the rustle of the boughs as it passed, leaping across the intervening spaces with swift, ape-like bounds. Presently, when it reached that thick clump of trees, it would leap ahead, crouch, and take aim. Lessing acted on the impulse of the moment. A doctor's plate shone bright on a doorway--he pealed the electric bell, and a moment later stood safe within the entrance hall. The doctor found his patient wanting in nervous force, prescribed a tonic, and rose to intimate that the interview was over; then, as the patient failed to take the hint, explained that he himself was obliged to go out at once. His opinion of the gravity of the case was increased when the patient first expressed a wish to accompany him on his walk, and then bade him good night at the first corner! And that night Delia was kinder than ever and the savour of life more alluringly sweet! During the days that followed Lessing developed a horror of solitude. The old evenings with a pipe and a book became abhorrent, and on the nights when he did not go to the corner house, he either dined in town or invited a friend to share his home repast. It was therefore with real relief that one Saturday morning he received a telegraphic invitation from a leisured friend who diversified a roving existence by flying visits to his country home. The telegram showed the expansiveness of the man of means, and ran as follows: "Returning to Moat this afternoon. Try to join me for a week-end. Car will meet four-thirty on chance.-- "Blakeney."