“Was not that Alresca?” she cried.

“Where?”

“At the end of the corridor — there!”

“I saw no one, and it couldn’t have been he, for the simple reason that he can’t walk yet, not to mention climbing three flights of stairs. You have made yourself nervous.”

We descended to the ground-floor. In the main hall Alresca’s housekeeper, evidently an old acquaintance, greeted Rosa with a curtsy, and she stopped to speak to the woman. I went on to the salon.

The aspect of the room is vividly before me now as I write. Most of the great chamber was in a candle-lit gloom, but the reading-lamp burnt clearly at the head of the couch, throwing into prominence the fine profile of Alresca’s