nor the chill draught that came under the front door.  He gazed up into the obscurity at the top of the stairs.  The red glow of the kitchen fire, in the distance to the right of the stairs, caught his attention at intervals.  He was obsessed, almost overpowered, by the mysteriousness of the first floor.  What had happened?  What was happening?  And suddenly an explanation swept into his brain—­the obvious explanation.  His aunt had missed the bank-notes and was probably at that very instant working herself into an anguish.  What ought he to do?  Should he run up and knock at her door?  He was spared a decision by the semi-miraculous appearance of Rachel at the top of the stairs.  She started.

“Oh!  How you frightened me!” she exclaimed in a low voice.

He answered weakly, charmingly—­

“Did I?”

“Will you please come and speak to Mrs. Maldon?  She wants you.”

“In her room?”

Rachel nodded and disappeared before he could ask another question.  With heart beating he ascended the stairs by twos.  Through the half-open door of the faintly lit room which he himself would occupy he could hear Rachel active.  And then he was at the closed door of his aunt’s room.  “I must be jolly careful how I do it!” he thought as he knocked.

II

He was surprised, and impressed, to see Mrs. Maldon in bed.  She lay on her back, with her striking head raised high on several pillows.  Nothing else of her was visible; the purple eider-down covered the whole bed without a crease.

“Hello, auntie!” he greeted her, instinctively modifying his voice to the soft gentleness proper to the ordered and solemn chamber.

Mrs. Maldon, moving her head, looked at him in silence.  He tiptoed to the foot of the bed and leaned on it gracefully.  And as in the parlour his shadow had fallen on the table, so now, with the gas just behind him, it fell on the bed.  The room was chilly and had a slight pharmaceutical odour.

Mrs. Maldon said, with a weak effort—­

“I was feeling faint, and Rachel thought I’d better get straight to bed.  I’m an old woman, Louis.”

“She hasn’t missed them!” he thought in a flash, and said, aloud—­

“Nothing of the sort, auntie.”

He was aware of the dim reflection of himself in the mirror of the immense Victorian mahogany wardrobe to his left.

Mrs. Maldon again hesitated before speaking.

“You aren’t ill, are you, auntie?” he said in a cheerful, friendly whisper.  He was touched by the poignant pathos of her great age and her debility.  It rent his heart to think that she had no prospect but the grave.

She murmured, ignoring his question—­

“I just wanted to tell you that you needn’t go down home for your night things—­unless you specially want to, that is.  I have all that’s necessary here, and I’ve given orders to Rachel.”