“Doctor Levillier is a great friend of mine,” Valentine said.  “He is a famous nerve-doctor.  Seeing you hovering about his door led me to suppose you might be ill, and were going to consult him.  I hope you are not ill.”

“Not I!”

“Because he is away from home at present.”

“Oh!”

“Do you want to see him?”

“I suppose I can see him, like any one else, if I’ve a mind to.”

“Well!  He’s—­he doesn’t see quite every one.  His practice is only among the richest and smartest people in town.  Some one else might answer your purpose better.”

He spoke suavely, but the words he said cemented Cuckoo’s previously vague thought of trying, perhaps, to see Doctor Levillier into a sudden, strong determination.  She divined that, for some reason, Valentine was anxious that she should not see him.  That was enough.  She would, at whatever cost, make his acquaintance.

“I’ll see him if I like,” she said hastily, lost to any appreciation of wisdom, through the desire of aiming an instant blow at Valentine.

“Of course!  Why not?” was his reply.

“You don’t want me to.  I can see that,” she went on, still more unadvisedly.  “You needn’t think as you can get over me so easily.”

Valentine’s smile showed a certain contempt that angered her.

“I know you,” she cried.

“Do you?” he said.  “I wonder if you would like to know me?  Do you remember Marr?”

The lady of the feathers turned cold.

“Marr!” she faltered; “what of him?”

“You have not forgotten him.”

“He’s dead!”

A pause.

“He’s dead, I say.”

“Exactly!  As dead as a strong man who has lived long in the world ever can be.”

“What d’you mean?  I say he’s dead and buried and done with.”  Her voice was rather noisy and shrill.

“That’s just where you make a mistake,” Valentine said quite gravely, rather like a philosopher about to embark upon an argument.  “He is not done with.  Suppose you fear a man, you hate him, you kill him, you put him under the ground, you have not done with him.”

“I didn’t kill him!  I didn’t, I didn’t!” Cuckoo cried out, shrilly, half rising from the sofa.  A wild suspicion suddenly came over her that Valentine was pursuing her as an avenger of blood, under the mistaken idea that she had done Marr to death in the night.

“Hush!  I know that.  He died naturally, as a doctor would say, and he has been buried; and by now probably he is a shell that can only contain the darkness of his grave.  Yet, for all that, he’s not done with, Miss Bright.”

“He is! he is!” she persisted.