But the maid came up and told Miss Mag that her mother and Lieutenant O’Flaherty were waiting on the steps for her; and so, though loath to go unsatisfied, away she went, with a courtesy to Mr. Dangerfield and a kiss to Mrs. Sturk, who revived on hearing it was only her fat kindly neighbour from over the way, instead of Black Doctor Dillon, with his murderous case of instruments.

The gentleman in the silver spectacles accompanied her to the lobby, and offered his hand; but she dispensed with his attendance, and jumped down the stairs with one hand to the wall and the other on the banisters, nearly a flight at a time; and the cackle of voices rose from the hall door, which quickly shut, and the fair vision had vanished.

Dangerfield’s silver spectacles gleamed phosphorically after her from under his lurid forehead.  It was not a pleasant look, and his mouth was very grim.  In another instant he was in the room again, and glanced at his watch.

‘’Tis half-past nine,’ he said, in a quiet tone, but with a gleam of intense fury over his face, ‘and that—­that—­doctor named nine.’

Dangerfield waited, and talked a little to Mrs. Sturk and the maid, who were now making preparations, in short sentences, by fits and starts of half-a-dozen words at a time.  He had commenced his visit ceremoniously, but now he grew brusque, and took the command:  and his tones were prompt and stern, and the women grew afraid of him.

Ten o’clock came.  Dangerfield went down stairs, and looked from the drawing-room windows.  He waxed more and more impatient.  Down he went to the street.  He did not care to walk towards the King’s House, which lay on the road to Dublin; he did not choose to meet his boon companions again, but he stood for full ten minutes, with one of Dr. Sturk’s military cloaks about him, under the village tree, directing the double-fire of his spectacles down the street, with an incensed steadiness, unrewarded, unrelieved.  Not a glimmer of a link; not a distant rumble of a coach-wheel.  It was a clear, frosty night, and one might hear a long way.

If any of the honest townsfolk had accidentally lighted upon that muffled, glaring image under the dark old elm, I think he would have mistaken it for a ghost, or something worse.  The countenance at that moment was not prepossessing.

Mr. Dangerfield was not given to bluster, and never made a noise; but from his hollow jaws he sighed an icy curse towards Dublin, which had a keener edge than all the roaring blasphemies of Donnybrook together; and, with another shadow upon his white face, he re-entered the house.

‘He’ll not come to-night, Ma’am,’ he said with a cold abruptness.

‘Oh, thank Heaven!—­that is—­I’m so afraid—­I mean about the operation.’

Dangerfield, with his hands in his pockets, said nothing.  There was a sneer on his face, white and dark, somehow.  That was all.  Was he baffled, and was Dr. Sturk, after all, never to regain his speech?