While such notions ran through his head he was hurrying to the stairs, and dropping a hail of candle-grease on the floor.  He found Mrs. Prockter slowly and cautiously ascending the stairway.  If he was at the summit of Mont Blanc she had already reached Les Grands Mulets.

“What is it?” she asked, pausing, and looking up at him with an appealing gesture.

“What’s what?”

“Why have you been so long?” It was as if she implied that these minutes without him were an eternity of ennui.  He grew more and more conceited.  He was already despising Don Juan as a puling boy.

“Helen heard summat, and so she had come out of her bedroom.  Her’s nervous i’ this big house.”

“Did you tell her I was here, Mr. Ollerenshaw?”

By this time he had rejoined her at Les Grands Mulets.

“No,” he said, without sufficiently reflecting.

“She didn’t hear me call out, then?”

“Did ye call out?” If he was in a theatre, he also could act.

“Perhaps it’s just as well,” said Mrs. Prockter, after a momentary meditation.  “Under the circumstances she cannot possibly suspect our little plot.”

Their little plot!  In yielding to the impulse to tell her that Helen was unaware of her presence in the house he had forgotten that he had made it excessively difficult for him to demolish the said plot.  He could not one moment agree with enthusiasm to the plot, and the next moment say that the plot had better be abandoned.  Some men, doubtless, could.  But he could not.  He was scarcely that kind of man.  His proper course would have been to relate to Mrs. Prockter exactly what had passed between himself and Helen, and trust to her common sense.  Unhappily, with the intention of pleasing her, or reassuring her, or something equally silly, he had lied to her and rendered the truth impracticable.  However, he did not seem to care much.  He had already pushed Helen’s affairs back again to quite a secondary position.

“I suppose ye think it’ll be all right, missis,” he said, carelessly—­“ye going up to Mrs. Swetnam’s o’ that ’n, and—­”

“Rely on me,” said she, silencing him.  Thus, without a pang, he left Helen to her fate.  They had touched the ground-floor.  “Thank you very much, Mr. Ollerenshaw,” said Mrs. Prockter.  “Good-night.  I’ll make the best of my way home.”

Curious, how sorry he felt at this announcement!  He had become quite accustomed to being a conspirator with her in the vast house lighted by a single candle, and he did not relish the end of the performance.

“I’ll step along wi’ ye,” said he.

“Oh, no!” she said.  “I really can’t allow—­”

“Allow what?”

“Allow you to inconvenience yourself like that for me.”

“Pooh!” said he.

And he, who had never in his life seen a lady to her door, set out on the business as though he had done nothing else every night of his life, as though it was an enterprise that did not require practice.