“I have ventured to intrude on you, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount, “to express the regret with which both my master and I have heard of Miss Bygrave’s illness.  Is there no improvement?”

“No, ma’am,” replied the captain, as briefly as possible.  “My niece is no better.”

“I have had some experience, Mr. Bygrave, in nursing.  If I could be of any use—­”

“Thank you, Mrs. Lecount.  There is no necessity for our taking advantage of your kindness.”

This plain answer was followed by a moment’s silence.  The housekeeper felt some little perplexity.  What had become of Mr. Bygrave’s elaborate courtesy, and Mr. Bygrave’s many words?  Did he want to offend her?  If he did, Mrs. Lecount then and there determined that he should not gain his object.

“May I inquire the nature of the illness?” she persisted.  “It is not connected, I hope, with our excursion to Dunwich?”

“I regret to say, ma’am,” replied the captain, “it began with that neuralgic attack in the carriage.”

“So! so!” thought Mrs. Lecount.  “He doesn’t even try to make me think the illness a real one; he throws off the mask at starting.—­Is it a nervous illness, sir?” she added, aloud.

The captain answered by a solemn affirmative inclination of the head.

“Then you have two nervous sufferers in the house, Mr. Bygrave?”

“Yes, ma’am—­two.  My wife and my niece.”

“That is rather a strange coincidence of misfortunes.”

“It is, ma’am.  Very strange.”

In spite of Mrs. Lecount’s resolution not to be offended, Captain Wragge’s exasperating insensibility to every stroke she aimed at him began to ruffle her.  She was conscious of some little difficulty in securing her self-possession before she could say anything more.

“Is there no immediate hope,” she resumed, “of Miss Bygrave being able to leave her room?”

“None whatever, ma’am.”

“You are satisfied, I suppose, with the medical attendance?”

“I have no medical attendance,” said the captain, composedly.  “I watch the case myself.”

The gathering venom in Mrs. Lecount swelled up at that reply, and overflowed at her lips.

“Your smattering of science, sir,” she said, with a malicious smile, “includes, I presume, a smattering of medicine as well?”

“It does, ma’am,” answered the captain, without the slightest disturbance of face or manner.  “I know as much of one as I do of the other.”

The tone in which he spoke those words left Mrs. Lecount but one dignified alternative.  She rose to terminate the interview.  The temptation of the moment proved too much for her, and she could not resist casting the shadow of a threat over Captain Wragge at parting.

“I defer thanking you, sir, for the manner in which you have received me,” she said, “until I can pay my debt of obligation to some purpose.  In the meantime I am glad to infer, from the absence of a medical attendant in the house, that Miss Bygrave’s illness is much less serious than I had supposed it to be when I came here.”