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thing; and youth, you know, youth forgets so soon. And in such a case as this it is much to be desired. am afraid my dear friends here would feel it, but nothing would please me better than for him to find some nice girl, desirable from every point of view, of course who would console him for all he has gone through."

The scene of the day before involuntarily rose before me, and the two young heads outlined against the twilight; but it was not of Janie Moorhouse that the mother was thinking.

Sir

"I was very fond of Barbara. Richard and I were quite satisfied with our son's choice, and pleased to receive her as a daughter. But, sorry as I am for the Alleynes, I cannot think of this affair quite as they do. Her father seems so confident she is dead, Eleanor that she has been trapped away from them and is held in some kind of impossible durance; and even if I could, I would not argue against their convictions. But, Miss Varney, surely you do not agree with them in either view?"

"I do not know what to think. I am quite at a loss."

"Mr. Alleyne is annoyed at the opinion the police have formed about it; but only consider probability. Is it likely any one would have any motive for detaining her against her will That is what I feel so strongly, the absence of conceivable motive in either case. No, you may depend upon it she went away voluntarily. It is quite true there may have been no settled intention beforehand to throw over my son, and inflict such a blow upon her parents; but my conviction is she met some one that night,-possibly by connivance of one of the household, I cannot say and was persuaded to take the fatal step of quitting her home."

"We have felt that to be unlikely, knowing her; for my part, on the testi

mony of those who knew her well. Besides, there was no lover."

The little woman of the world shook her head as she warmed her dainty feet on the fender. She found Ditchborough cold, and had muffled herself in a soft fleecy wrap which breathed the same odour of sandal-wood as all her other possessions. "My dear Miss Varney, there is always a lover when a girl is as attractive as Barbara. And has it not occurred to you that the cousin may be in the secret? The two were brought up together, and would naturally be intimate. Do not you think Janet Moorhouse might throw some light on the mystery if she would?”

Janie again, and from a different quarter this time! I replied that I could not think so; I had heard her questioned, and her distress and perplexity seemed to equal ours.

Lady Sudeleigh shook her head again, but did not press the point. "And as for Mr. Alleyne's conviction she is dead, I see no evidence for it whatever. The very sending back of the clothes is to me a proof she is alive, and there had been no violence. There is an old saying 'murder will out'; surely such a search as has been made would by now have discovered the body or traces of it. I feel confident she is alive. And what would be more terrible than all for my poor friends, and for Richardwould be her return with the blemished reputation of such an escapade. dreadful to say it, but that is my chief fear." I looked at her as she sat erect, cup in hand, slowly stirring in an added lump of sugar, a little Rhadamanthus of virtue; the easiest chair never offered any temptation to her to lounge. "Eleanor tells me," she went on presently, "that Mr. Alleyne's belief is mainly founded on having seen an apparition. Of course we can allow a great deal for excited

It is

cup of your tea, Susan; and he has consented to stay and dine with us. Redworth, you and Lady Sudeleigh are already acquainted."

feeling at such a time, but I had thought him a different man." "That was very much my own view: it was a surprise to me to find Gregory so impressed; but there certainly was the apparition. I witnessed it myself, and so did one of the servants; but I should be glad to think it all hallucination. I am not used to put faith in such matters."

"Excited feeling in all three cases, no doubt; the result of the shock you had experienced, and the strained expectancy of those first days. I have always set my face against this depraved craze for dreaming dreams and seeing visions,-Psychical Research unearthing what should be relegated to a moral dustheap, as was the wiser practice of my youth. We know there are no such things as ghosts, so how is it possible to see them?"

I remembered Mr. Redworth and his theory of the thought-body; but I was not going to argue with the little dame, who glanced at me with an air of triumphant Sadduceeism, as if her fiat had routed into Nirvâna a whole army of phantoms. She was on my own side of the argument, but somehow it did not sound so convincing from her extreme point of view as when it floated unformulated in my own mind. As I turned to the tea-tray I could not help a glance down the room, empty now, but for ever associated with my memory of that deceptive simulacrum,—that shadow of Barbara in bridal white, which had moved away from our appeal. But I was spared the necessity of replying, as the hall-door opened and shut, and I heard another footstep and voice accompanying Gregory's. There was the pause of throwing off over-coats and suchlike winter trappings, and then my cousin entered ushering in Mr. Redworth.

"I have brought Redworth for a

"On my own introduction only," said the mellow voice with which I had become familiar. "I shall get you, Alleyne, to present me formally."

Lady Sudeleigh had brightened up at once with the appearance of the gentlemen-a survival of youth there also and shaken off all the severity with which she was contemplating Psychical Research. No indeed, she said, no presentation of Mr. Redworth was necessary; she had a most grateful recollection of all he had done for her, and was charmed to have the opportunity of again expressing her thanks.

So he drew into the circle at the fire; and some lively conversation followed in which I was chiefly a listener, and so had leisure for observation. I thought Mr. Redworth had altered in the fortnight or so since I had seen him; there was a shade of depression about him when silent, and the melancholy softness of his dark eyes was sadder and gentler than ever, perhaps in contrast with the black vivacity of Lady Sudeleigh's. She had plenty to say on all kinds of subjects, and he was readier to meet her on her own ground than we were, being more used to the world in which she had moved. He amused her, in short, and was evidently a welcome addition to our rather melancholy circle. I liked him also, and I am sure to Gregory it was a boon that he should contribute to the entertainment of the guest. There was however one person who, if I mistake not, would have preferred his absence, and that was Janie. She did not make her appearance till the announcement of dinner, and then her greeting of Mr. Redworth was silent and formal, and she only once addressed him in the

course of the evening. I noticed too that she ate hardly anything, as if, ridiculous as it may seem, the discomfort of his neighbourhood deprived her of appetite. I caught him once or twice regarding her curiously, and with something of the look I had once before surprised from him. It surely could not have hurt his vanity that out of his small audience of four, one listener should be unsympathetic; the rest of us were readily interested or amused, and the conversational shuttlecock was tossed gaily to and fro between him and Lady Sudeleigh. He was not, it seemed, content to be only alchemist and mystic; to-night it was the frequenter of London clubs and drawing-rooms, the cynical cynical observer and wit who was posing before us; but always in the rare silences the shadow settled back upon his face.

Lady Sudeleigh, as I said, was well amused; and it was not till after the gentlemen joined us in the drawingroom that she remembered to challenge him about the arm. She did so with a graceful affectation of horror, and tapped his sleeve with her fan assuring him that he was "quite uncanny."

"It is unchanged at present: the journey did not disturb the process; but whether I have succeeded time alone will show. There lies the test. I may flatter myself for weeks, months perhaps, that I have triumphed over the Destroyer; but in my results hitherto he has been victor and not I."

"But I thought you had made some successes," put in Gregory.

"Perfect successes with animals ; and I doubt not I could succeed as entirely with humanity provided I could induce death in my own way. It is in the post-mortem application I am inexpert. If you have any pet animals that you wish to preserve, Lady Sudeleigh, let me have them

when the time comes and I will give them their quietus."

"I am not a lover of pets like some people; but, if I were, I should hesitate to send them to suffer strange things in their old age."

"They would not suffer. I am no vivisector, I assure you. I dislike pain myself, and would hesitate to inflict it on another, physical pain, that is even by way of reprisal." The last words he added thoughtfully, and with that odd trick of stroking the upper lip which somewhat disguised his expression. "My victims, as you may call them,—and I have a whole Bluebeard's closet of them in fur and feathers have not suffered a

single pang. I overcome alarm with an anæsthetic, and use the injectingneedle as with morphia; in some cases administering an internal dose in addition. They never recover consciousness, but sleep themselves away in about twelve hours. I have never witnessed suffering. I wish you would come and see them, and the arm. My human specimens are not numerous, being difficult to come by. I had a terrible disappointment when I was in France; did I ever tell you, Alleyne? I obtained a head from the guillotine; the head of a young man who had been convicted of something quite abnormal in the way of crime, and who showed a revolting cowardice at the last, so I was told; I was not an eye-witness. Well, I had the head within an hour or less, and to all appearance the injection was absolutely successful. You should have seen that face,—the beatified expression on it after I had operated; no saint or martyr could have excelled it ; it lacked only the aureole. It remained beatified for seventeen weeks, and then my failure was apparent. Limbs have remained unchanged for longer periods. All this is very horrid, is it not, Miss Moorhouse?" I do

not know why he addressed Janie, for she was not looking at him even, but had her eyes resolutely bent on her work. She did not reply; perhaps he did not expect an answer, for he hardly paused for one, and said, turning to Gregory: "Even if Lady Sudeleigh does not care to see my specimens [she had protested in dumb show when it was proposed], I have many things at Coldhope which would be of interest to her and to Miss Varney, and the house itself is considered worth a visit. Do me a favour, Alleyne. Lunch with me to-morrow at any hour you like to name, and suade the ladies to accompany you. I would include Miss Moorhouse, but perhaps you would not all care to leave Mrs. Alleyne?"

per

He was looking directly at her, with again that peculiarity of regard. This time she raised her head and met it full. "Thank you," she said, "you are right: I will not leave Mrs. Alleyne."

No one took any notice of this brief passage. Lady Sudeleigh would be enchanted, she said, to see Coldhope, if Mr. Redworth would promise,-really promise not to introduce her to any of his horrors; and as for myself, I was willing enough to accompany her, provided the proposal pleased Gregory. It had been impossible hitherto to persuade him to go anywhere since our loss; but doubtless he did not wish to refuse so near a friend and neighbour, and he consented easily, rather to my surprise. Mr. Redworth professed himself highly honoured, and bowing low to Lady Sudeleigh pledged his word that all his horrors should be under lock and key.

"And this great invention," she went on, "when are you going to startle the world with it? When will it be ripe for disclosure?"

"I cannot call it an invention; it is the revival of an old method, and

has been practised, by injection of the carotid artery, in modern times, but not with the results I hope to attain. You ask when it will be ready for disclosure," he looked down meditatively as if considering; "possibly in about forty years."

She gave a laughing exclamation. "I need not excite myself about it then. At sixty-five I take little interest in what is in store for the world forty years ahead. The others may perhaps hope to see you set the Thames on fire, but not I."

He smiled, drawing up his fine head and squaring his chest. "Then the expectation is stranger still in my case, as I am your senior. I have counted the threescore years and ten that is supposed to be the allotted span of life."

She looked up at him with genuine astonishment, no counterfeit of it in compliment; and it was true he looked as young as many men of fifty. "I was joking the other day about the fountain of youth, but you must have found it in good earnest. My dear Mr. Redworth, you are more wonderful than ever!"

His smile deepened and then faded, and the shadow succeeded it as he

answered, "Not that; I profess nothing of the kind. Had I made such a discovery I should hardly withhold it from my friends. But there are certain ascetic rules given by the old mystics, certain methods of revitalisation, which do tend to prolong life. I feel myself a younger man than I did ten years ago, and my expectation of life indefinitely increased, apart from disease or accident. I am beginning to wonder if the game is worth the candle after all."

But

From this the conversation turned to other matters; but later on, when Lady Sudeleigh was engaged in a lively argument with Gregory, and Janie had left the room, he came to

sit by me, saying in a low voice: "Has there been any further appearance here that you could recognise?" I replied in the negative, speaking in the same subdued key, and he went on: "I am interested, more deeply than you can know, and with greater faith than you accord, you, the eyewitness. I begin to think that after all is the crux,-the perception beyond; that I have been mistaken in all my groping on this plane. To those who study as I do, there comes a point of advance where the two ways diverge. I have attained it, and I hesitate which to follow. That would decide me [he breathed the last words almost in a whisper] if I could know for certain the via celestica, the upward way, would lead me to her!"

Next day dawned cold with keen March wind and crisp with March frost, but bright and fair. Eleanor was interested in our proposed visit and quite willing for us to leave her; her prejudice against Mr. Redworth appeared to be dying out; perhaps, indeed, she had only disliked him as a suitor for Barbara. She was sitting up on her sofa when we went in for a word of adieu, and seemed in more equable spirits than the day before; possibly it was really a relief to her that the dreaded farewell to Dick was no longer in anticipation. Lady Sudeleigh whispered a word to her, and I gathered it was about my appearance. "Yes," returned Eleanor, "other people have noticed the likeness. There is a certain family resemblance, no doubt; Gregory sees it more plainly than I do."

it was really remarkable. It may be the way you are dressed; but it struck me irresistibly."

There was nothing particular about the dress; a close-fitting jacket of winter cloth, and a hat and veil, such as might equally have been worn by my years or Barbara's without peculiarity on her side or an aping of youth on mine. No doubt the lace veil concealed my lack of complexion and may have helped the illusion; but I only note the incident because of something which happened later.

The brougham had been ordered to take us up to Coldhope early, as we were to see the gardens and hot-houses before lunch; Gregory following on foot after getting through his morning hours of literary work. The coachman proved unpunctual as usual; and as Lady Sudeleigh was afraid of waiting indoors in her heavy furs, I suggested we should walk to the churchyard, as she had expressed a wish to see a certain tombstone, curious on account of its grotesque carving and epitaph, which had been spoken of the night before. We went in through the private wicket from the garden; and while my companion inspected the tomb with interest through her longhandled eyeglass, my attention was caught by a disturbance in the road, -angry voices in altercation, then blows and a child's scream. The churchyard sloped upward, so by moving further along the path I saw what was happening, a big boy belabouring a smaller one, who cried out dismally under the chastisement. called to him to desist, but other intervention proved nearer at hand than mine. Janie was passing in the road, and I saw her seize the big hulking lad by the collar, and catch at the descending stick, at some risk to herself preventing a further blow.

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"For shame, Phil Dempster ! To strike a boy who is a cripple, and not