When the domestic turned at this and went in, Theron felt like throwing his hat in the air, there where he stood.  The woman’s churlish sectarian prejudices had played ideally into his hands.  In no other imaginable way could he have asked for Celia so naturally.  He wondered a little that a servant at such a grand house as this should leave callers standing on the doorstep.  Still more he wondered what he should say to the lady of his dream when he came into her presence.

“Will you please to walk this way?” The woman had returned.  She closed the door noiselessly behind him, and led the way, not up the sumptuous staircase, as Theron had expected, but along through the broad hall, past several large doors, to a small curtained archway at the end.  She pushed aside this curtain, and Theron found himself in a sort of conservatory, full of the hot, vague light of sunshine falling through ground-glass.  The air was moist and close, and heavy with the smell of verdure and wet earth.  A tall bank of palms, with ferns sprawling at their base, reared itself directly in front of him.  The floor was of mosaic, and he saw now that there were rugs upon it, and that there were chairs and sofas, and other signs of habitation.  It was, indeed, only half a greenhouse, for the lower part of it was in rosewood panels, with floral paintings on them, like a room.

Moving to one side of the barrier of palms, he discovered, to his great surprise, the figure of Michael, sitting propped up with pillows in a huge easy-chair.  The sick man was looking at him with big, gravely intent eyes.  His face did not show as much change as Theron had in fancy pictured.  It had seemed almost as bony and cadaverous on the day of the picnic.  The hands spread out on the chair-arms were very white and thin, though, and the gaze in the blue eyes had a spectral quality which disturbed him.

Michael raised his right hand, and Theron, stepping forward, took it limply in his for an instant.  Then he laid it down again.  The touch of people about to die had always been repugnant to him.  He could feel on his own warm palm the very damp of the grave.

“I only heard from Father Forbes last evening of your—­your ill-health,” he said, somewhat hesitatingly.  He seated himself on a bench beneath the palms, facing the invalid, but still holding his hat.  “I hope very sincerely that you will soon be all right again.”

“My sister is lying down in her room,” answered Michael.  He had not once taken his sombre and embarrassing gaze from the other’s face.  The voice in which he uttered this uncalled-for remark was thin in fibre, cold and impassive.  It fell upon Theron’s ears with a suggestion of hidden meaning.  He looked uneasily into Michael’s eyes, and then away again.  They seemed to be looking straight through him, and there was no shirking the sensation that they saw and comprehended things with an unnatural prescience.

“I hope she is feeling better,” Theron found himself saying.  “Father Forbes mentioned that she was a little under the weather.  I dined with him last night.”