Severino lay looking at the imaginative man.

“And yet you could suspect another after that!”

“Ah, there is some mystery there also.  But it is strange, indeed, to think that I was right in the beginning!”

“I did not know what I was doing,” resumed the young Italian, who, like many a clever foreigner, spoke more precise English than any Englishman; that, with an accent too delicate for written reproduction, alone would have betrayed him.  “I still have very little recollection of what happened between my climbing out of our garden and dropping into theirs.  I remember that my feet were rather cold, but that is about all.

“It was near midnight, as you know, and the room it happened in—­the study—­had the brightest light of all.  An electric lamp was blazing on the writing-table at the window, and another from a bracket among the books.  The window was as wide open as it would go, the lower sash thrown right up; it was just above the scullery window, which is half underground, and has an outside grating.  The sill was only the height of one’s chin.  I can tell you all that now, but at the time I knew very little until I was in the room itself.  Thank you, I will take another sip.  It does me more good than harm to tell you.  But you will find it all written down.”

Langholm set down the glass and replenished it.  The night had fallen without.  The single candle in the farthest corner supplied the only light; in it the one man sat, and the other lay, their eyes locked.

“I spilt the ink as I was creeping over the desk.  That is an odd thing to remember, but I was looking for something to wipe it up with when I heard their voices upstairs.”

“You heard them both?”

“Yes—­quarrelling—­and about me!  The first thing I heard was my own name.  Then the man came running down.  But I never tried to get away.  The doors were all open.  I had heard something else, and I waited to tell him what a liar he was!  But I turned out the lights, so that she should not hear the outcry, and sure enough he shut both doors behind him (you would notice there were two) before he turned them on again.  So there we stood.

“‘Don’t let her hear us,’ were my first words; and we stood and cursed each other under our breath.  I don’t know why he didn’t knock me down, or rather I do know; it was because I put my hands behind my back and invited him to do it.  I was as furious as he was.  I forgot that there was anything the matter with me, but when I began telling him that there had been, he looked as though he could have spat in my face.  It was no use going on.  I could not expect him to believe a word.