Monsieur Chatelard, compact in self-possession, precisely attired, as if he had not been called from slumber at the worst hour of the night by a sense of mortal emergency! And yet a very different Chatelard, either from the eager traveller or the genial raconteur and table companion they had known: this was Chatelard the physician—the world-renowned specialist.

There was a weighty professional seriousness about him as he advanced into the room, fixing his spectacles with thumb and forefinger; an air of confident responsibility. He wasted not a second upon curiosity at the singular group by the bed, but sent his keen direct gaze straight to the patient.

"She's killed herself," was his first thought. "Poison," he murmured aloud, and his gesture was enough to clear the bedside for his own approach.

"No," said a voice close to him. "Not poison-shock."

M. Chatelard looked up quickly, and immediately became aware of a stranger's presence.

"Monsieur?" he exclaimed. He, too, had instantly concluded that the second man in the room must be Bethune. He was shaken into surprise. "In the name of Heaven, who are you?"

"I am her husband, whom she thought dead. I took her by surprise; she fainted."

M. Chatelard formed his lips for a noiseless whistle. Affairs, at one bound, had complicated themselves with a vengeance. Incredibly interesting! ... But the emergency claimed him. He bent over the bed, and there was silence all through the room.

Even Sir Arthur, recalled from his undignified attitude, was stilled; not so much indeed from the sense that a human life was trembling in the balance, but from the demands which the presence of a new witness made upon decorum.

The doctor raised himself and held out his hand.

"A candle," he said briefly.

It was given to him, and again the silence reigned.

M. Chatelard, with deft and gentle touch, lifted the heavy eyelid, passed the flame before it, and peered for some seconds into the fixed pupil, abnormally dilated. Then he handed back the light. Harry English took it, and held it aloft while the doctor once more consulted pulse and heart.

Muttering that he would never travel without his stethescope again, M. Chatelard laid his cropped head on the fair bosom. Again the seconds ticked by with nightmare slowness. The brown hand that held the candle was shaken with slight tremor. At last M. Chatelard straightened himself with the final air of one who pronounces a verdict.

"This is no mere syncope," he said. "This is brain trouble. Shock, as you said, sir," with a grave inclination of his head towards Captain English.

Old Mary, back from her errand, here proffered some brandy in a glass.

"What is that?" cried the physician, sharply. "Brandy," he said, sniffing. "Heaven preserve us, 'tis well I am here! Above all things she must not be roused. Mon cher Monsieur," he went on, turning again to Harry English, "here all our efforts must be to help nature, not to oppose her. Let all those lights be extinguished," he added authoritatively. "We must have darkness and quiet. How come all these people in the room?" He spoke with the doctor's immediate irritation at surroundings injurious to his patient.

There are situations passing the endurance of human nature, especially when it is the human nature of a person of high political importance. Here was M. Chatelard actually addressing yonder infernal interloper as the leading person!

"I call you to witness, M. Chatelard," Sir Arthur cried excitedly, "that this is some conspiracy that I by no means acknowledge——"

Old Mary interposed, subdued yet urgent.

"Oh, sir, it is indeed my master!"

"Hush, Arty, come away now!" whispered Lady Aspasia; and once more clasped his elbow with strong sensible hand. "There will be plenty of time for all this by-and-by."

"Unless you want to kill her altogether, Sir Gerardine," said Dr. Chatelard, gravely, "you will make no scenes here."

Harry English stood sentinel by his wife's bed, disdaining speech.

"Unless you want to kill her," had said the doctor. As the words had been spoken Sir Arthur looked quickly at her whom he had called wife. "Better she should die," thought he. The whole measure of his love for the woman in whose beauty he had gloried was in that mean thought. Better she should die, since her existence was no longer an honour but a shame to him, Sir Arthur. He had loved her as part of himself; no longer his, what was she to him? Nothing more than the amputated limb to its owner, a thing to hide out of sight with all speed, a thing to bury away.

"I beg of you again," resumed Dr. Chatelard, in tones of restrained impatience; "I can have no one remain."

A couple of servant girls, who stood huddled whispering in their corner, slid away one after the other.

Lady Aspasia, by some moral force and a good deal of muscular pressure, succeeded in dragging the protesting Sir Arthur in their wake. The doctor looked at old Mary—she dropped her curtsey.

"I might be of use, sir."

He considered her a second in silence.

"You may stay," he said.

"And I?" said Aspasia, her pallid tear-stained face was thrust pleadingly forward.

"You will do better to go, my child," said the Frenchman, paternally.

"Doctor ... she will not die?"

"Assuredly not this night at least," he replied, evasive yet consoling. From the door she flung back a piteous look at English, and once again his eyes answered her: "She will not die."

Harry English took the last unextinguished candle and laid it on the floor. Outside, the yellow grey dawn was breaking.

"I want hot bottles," ordered Dr. Chatelard of Mary; and when she had left the room, he turned to the strange man who had called himself Lady Gerardine's husband.

"You, too, sir," he said. "You must leave us."

Harry English started. For the first time, that ............