Burgo had not got as far as his own room before he was accosted by one of the servants. "Lady Clinton\'s compliments, and would Mr. Brabazon like a little light breakfast at once?"

Mr. Brabazon was much obliged to her ladyship, and, if it was quite convenient, he would like a cup of coffee and a rusk.

In five minutes they were brought him.

After that he tumbled into bed, slept like a top for four hours, got up, tubbed and dressed, after which, in his own parlance, he felt "as fresh as a daisy." He had ascertained overnight that his uncle never made his appearance downstairs before luncheon, and very often not then. So, without saying a word to any one, or troubling himself about breakfast, he quietly left the house on his way to the "yard" in search of Mr. Hendry. The jobmaster expressed himself as being very sorry for his own sake that things had turned out as they had; "but, of course, I\'m very glad for your sake, Mr. Brabazon, that you and Sir Everard have come together again."

"For anything I can tell to the contrary," said Burgo--"for one can never be sure what turn affairs will take--you may see me back at the yard, with nothing to do, before either of us is very much older."

"You will always be welcome, sir, and I\'ll engage to find you a job at any time, should you be in need of one."

With that the two men shook hands and parted.

Burgo got back to Great Mornington Street just as luncheon was served. His uncle was downstairs, and certainly looking no worse than on the previous day.

There, too, were her ladyship and Signora Dusanti, and the signora\'s little daughter, a child of ten. Conversation was general during the meal, personal topics being avoided as if by common consent. Even Sir Everard was quite chatty, and once or twice laughed heartily at some remark of Tina, who seemed a most precocious child for her years. Burgo found it had been already arranged that he and his uncle should go for a drive in the barouche, while Lady Clinton and the signora went shopping in the brougham.

At the last moment her ladyship said to her husband: "If you have no objection, dear, I should like Tina to go with you and Mr. Brabazon. I\'m afraid the poor child would find shopping very tiresome, and I am sure a good blow in the Park would do her far more good."

The corners of the baronet\'s mouth dropped for a moment; the next he said quite heartily: "Of course--of course. Let the child go with us, by all means."

A little later Burgo could not help asking himself whether Tina might not have been purposely sent with them in order to act as a check upon any confidential talk which might otherwise have passed between his uncle and himself in the course of the drive. At any rate, if that was her ladyship\'s intention, it proved thoroughly successful. The girl was such a shrewd little thing, and had so evidently been schooled into making good use of her ears, that both the men felt convinced that everything which might be said by them would be retailed to the signora, and would doubtless be passed on in due course to the person chiefly concerned. Consequently the talk was merely of such a kind as might have been overheard by the world at large. One remark which his uncle made gratified Burgo immensely. "Hoskins found a marked improvement in me this morning," he said; adding, with a laugh, "of course he gives all the credit of it to the particularly nauseous stuff I\'m taking just now. But, and I would, I could tell him different from that."

Sir Everard shrank from the publicity of the Row. "I\'ve only been once in it since my return," he said, "and on that occasion, if I was commiserated by one person on the score of my health, I was by twenty. It\'s an ordeal I don\'t care to face again. Let us take a quiet drive down Kensington way."

The rest of the day and evening passed as the preceding ones had done. After dinner came music and singing, and the baronet went so far as to indulge in one game of backgammon with his nephew. "It seems like old days come back," he remarked to Burgo, adding in a lower voice, "if only it will last! if only it will last!"

Soon after half-past nine he retired.

Burgo\'s second vigil was arranged on precisely the same lines as the first. His uncle slept well, only waking twice at irregular intervals, both times to find Burgo seated within a couple of yards of his bed, waiting patiently for him to open his eyes. In the course of this second night no conversation of what might be termed a private nature passed between them. More than once, when Sir Everard was sitting up in bed, Burgo saw him glance half-apprehensively, half-suspiciously at the door which opened into his wife\'s apartments, or rather, at the portière, which to-night was drawn completely across it. But whatever his thoughts or suspicions might be, he kept them to himself.

Next forenoon Dr. Hoskins\'s report was again a favourable one. "A few more days like this, my clear sir, and you will have made a big stride on the road to recovery," he said.

After luncheon her ladyship and the signora again went out together, ostensibly for shopping purposes, and again Sir Everard and Burgo, with little Tina for eavesdropper, went for a long suburban drive.

The third night of Burgo\'s sitting up was merely a repetition of the two previous ones. It was diversified by no incident worth recording, and again, as on the second night, the invalid confined such talk as passed between himself and his nephew to matters of little or no moment. It was evident to Burgo that he felt far from sure they were really alone, but he was doubtless unwilling to expose his wife to the ignominy of discovery, should it be a fact that she was playing the part of an unseen auditor.

Burgo did not feel himself at liberty to try the door as on the first night, unless requested by his uncle to do so; but, although since then his eyes had glanced at it times innumerable, after that first occasion he had seen nothing to lead him to suppose that it was otherwise than closely shut; still, so long as it remained half hidden by the portière, a doubt would inevitably make itself felt.

All this time Lady Clinton\'s amiability and graciousness towards Burgo had been eclipsed by no faintest shadow of change. She treated him as if he were there of right as a member of the family. That first interview between them might have had no existence, save in Burgo\'s imagination, for any hint or allusion to it which escaped her lips. Did she wish him to forget it? Was it her desire that he should consider the breach between his uncle and himself not merely as healed, but as if it had never arisen? It certainly seemed so, and under ordinary circumstances, no other conclusion would have been logically possible. But in this case the circumstances were not ordinary ones. There was his uncle\'s mysterious illness to be taken into account, and, above all, certain things which his uncle had said to him--phrases, as it seemed to him, charged with a terrible meaning. These were facts which it was impossible to ignore, or to put lightly aside as of little import. Then, again, some still, small, inner voice seemed to warn him against Lady Clinton. He mistrusted her instinctively, and in such cases he knew how useless it is to ask the why and the wherefore. Our likes and dislikes have their springs deeper than we can plumb, and constitute a part of that mysterious Ego which each of us calls Myself--which is at once our slave and our master, and which, even at the end of the longest life, we have only partially learned to know.

There was one very pertinent question which Burgo did not fail to put to himself, namely, "What change is there in me, what have I done between the date of my first interview with her ladyship and now, to cause her so radically to reverse her tactics towards me? She was as undoubtedly hostile to me then as she undoubtedly wishes me to believe her my friend now. Why this extraordinary volte-face? There must be a motive at the bottom of it; what is that motive?" He could only shake his head, and murmur, "Ma chère tante, what your little game is I don\'t in the least profess to know, but I believe you to be a snake in the grass, and a venomous one to boot, and I decline to trust you farther than I can see you."

He had time enough and to spare in which to turn these and sundry other matters over in his mind during his long hours of watching.

On this third morning he found his coffee and rusks waiting for him as usual on reaching his own room. The rusks he left untouched, but the coffee he drank off almost at a draught. It was nearly broad daylight outside, but the curtains were closely drawn so as to exclude it, and a couple of candles were alight on the dressing-table. After swallowing his coffee he sat down to smoke "just one" cigarette before turning in. As he lay back in his chair watching the grey spirals of smoke curl slowly upward, his thoughts reverted to a subject which had engaged them more than once already. Not a word had escaped Sir Everard with reference to that first interview between his nephew and Lady Clinton, and yet it was absurd to suppose that the arrangement was not of his own making, although probably due to his wife\'s instigation, or tha............