“In the dark?”

“Why not?  We can have candles.”

And so, a heavy silver candlestick in either hand, I presently found myself preceding Rosa up the wide branching staircase of the house.  We had left the owner with a reading-lamp at the head of his couch, and a copy of “Madame Bovary” to pass the time.

We stopped at the first landing to examine a picture.

“That mysterious complaint that he had, or thought he had, in London has left him, has it not?” she asked me suddenly, in a low, slightly apprehensive, confidential tone, moving her head in the direction of the salon below.

For some reason I hesitated.

“He says so,” I replied cautiously.  “At any rate, he is much better.”

“Yes, I can see that.  But he is still in a very nervous condition.”

“Ah,” I said, “that is only—­only at certain times.”

As we went together from room to room I forgot everything except the fact of her presence.  Never was beauty so powerful as hers; never was the power of beauty used so artlessly, with such a complete unconsciousness.  I began gloomily to speculate on the chances of her ultimately marrying Alresca, and a remark from her awoke me from my abstraction.  We were nearing the top of the house.

“It is all familiar to me, in a way,” she said.

“Why, you said the same down-stairs.  Have you been here before?”

“Never, to my knowledge.”

We were traversing a long, broad passage side by side.  Suddenly I tripped over an unexpected single stair, and nearly fell.  Rosa, however, had allowed for it.

“I didn’t see that step,” I said.

“Nor I,” she answered, “but I knew, somehow, that it was there.  It is very strange and uncanny, and I shall insist on an explanation from Alresca.”  She gave a forced laugh.

As I fumbled with the handle of the door she took hold of my hand.

“Listen!” she said excitedly, “this will be a small room, and over the mantelpiece is a little round picture of a dog.”

I opened the door with something akin to a thrill.  This part of the house was unfamiliar to me.  The room was certainly a small one, but there was no little round picture over the mantelpiece.  It was a square picture, and rather large, and a sea-piece.

“You guessed wrong,” I said, and I felt thankful.

“No, no, I am sure.”

She went to the square picture, and lifted it away from the wall.

“Look!” she said.

Behind the picture was a round whitish mark on the wall, showing where another picture had previously hung.

“Let us go, let us go!  I don’t like the flicker of these candles,” she murmured, and she seized my arm.

We returned to the corridor.  Her grip of me tightened.

“Was not that Alresca?” she cried.

“Where?”

“At the end of the corridor—­there!”

“I saw no one, and it couldn’t have been he, for the simple reason that he can’t walk yet, not to mention climbing three flights of stairs.  You have made yourself nervous.”