With plaudits and laughter the guests eagerly and noisily responded,--and as they drank, the pavilion was flooded by a deep crimson illumination as of fire. Every face looked blood-red!--every jewel on every woman flashed like a living flame!--for one brief instant only,--then it was gone, and there followed a general stampede of the company,--everybody hurrying as fast as they could into the carriages that waited in long lines to take them to the station, the last two 'special' trains to London being at one a.m. and one thirty. I bade Sibyl and her father a hurried good-night,--Diana Chesney went in the same carriage with them, full of ecstatic thanks and praise to me for the splendours of the day which she described in her own fashion as "knowing how to do it,--" and then the departing crowd of vehicles began to thunder down the avenue. As they went an arch of light suddenly spanned Willowsmere Court from end to end of its red gables, blazing with all the colours of the rainbow, in the middle of which appeared letters of pale blue and gold, forming what I had hitherto considered as a funereal device, "Sic transit gloria mundi! Vale!" But, after all, it was as fairly applicable to the ephemeral splendours of a fête as it was to the more lasting marble solemnity of a sepulchre, and I thought little or nothing about it. So perfect were all the arrangements, and so admirably were the servants trained, that the guests were not long in departing,--and the grounds were soon not only empty, but dark. Not a vestige of the splendid illuminations was left anywhere,--and I entered the house fatigued, and with a dull sense of bewilderment and fear on me which I could not explain. I found Lucio alone in the smoking-room at the further end of the oak-panelled hall, a small cosily curtained apartment with a deep bay window which opened directly on to the lawn. He was standing in this embrasure with his back to me, but he turned swiftly round as he heard my steps and confronted me with such a wild, white, tortured face that I recoiled from him, startled. "Lucio, you are ill!" I exclaimed--"you have done too much to-day." "Perhaps I have!" he answered in a hoarse unsteady voice, and I saw a strong shudder convulse him as he spoke,--then, gathering himself together as it were by an effort, he forced a smile--"Don't be alarmed, my friend!--it is nothing,--nothing but the twinge of an old deep-seated malady,--a troublesome disease that is rare among men, and hopelessly incurable." "What is it?" I asked anxiously, for his death-like pallor alarmed me. He looked at me fixedly, his eyes dilating and darkening, and his hand fell with a heavy pressure on my shoulder.