“Well, good-night, grannie.”

The Prophet bent to kiss her, his heart filled with compunction at the thought of the promise he was about to break.  It seemed to him almost more than sacrilegious to make of this dear and honoured ornament of old age a vehicle for the satisfaction of the vulgar ambitions and disagreeable curiosity of the couple who dwelt beside the Mouse.

“Good-night, my dear boy.”

She kissed him, then added,—­

“You like Lady Enid, don’t you?”

“Very much.”

“So does Robert Green.  He thinks her such a thoroughly sensible girl.”

“Bob!  Does he?” said the Prophet, concealing a slight smile.

“Yes.  If you want her to get on with you, Hennessey, you should come up to tea when she is here.”

“I couldn’t to-day, grannie.”

“You were really busy?”

“Very busy indeed.”

“I suppose you only saw her for a moment on the stairs?”

“That was all.”

It was true, for Lady Enid had scarcely stayed to speak to the Prophet, having hurried out in the hope of discovering who were the “two parties” he had been entertaining on the ground floor.

Mrs. Merillia dropped the subject.

“Good-night, Hennessey,” she said.  “Go to bed at once.  You look quite tired.  I am so thankful you have given up that horrible astronomy.”

The Prophet did not reply, but, as he went out of the room, he knew, for the first time, what criminals with consciences feel like when they are engaged in following their dread profession.

As he walked across the landing he heard a clock strike eleven.  He started, hastened into his room, tore off his coat, replaced it with a quilted smoking-jacket, sprang lightly to his table, seized a planisphere, or star-map, which he had succeeded in obtaining that night from a small working astronomer’s shop in the Edgeware Road, and, mindful of the terms of his oath and the decided opinion of Robert Green, scurried hastily, but very gingerly, down the stairs.  This time Mrs. Merillia did not hear him.  She had indeed become absorbed in a new romance, written by a very rising young Montenegrin who was just then making some stir in the literary circles of the elect.

Very surreptitiously the Prophet tripped across the hall and reached the stout door which gave access to the servants’ quarters.  But here he paused.  Although he had lived in Mrs. Merillia’s most comfortable home for at least fifteen years, he had actually never once penetrated beyond this door.  It had never occurred to him to do so.  Often he had approached it.  Quite recently, when Mrs. Fancy Quinglet had broken into tears on the refusal of Sir Tiglath Butt to burst according to her prediction, he had handed her to this very portal.  But he had never passed through it, nor did he know what lay beyond.  No doubt there was a kitchen, very probably the mysterious region of watery activities commonly known as a scullery, quite certainly a butler’s pantry.  But where each separate sanctum lay, and what should be the physiognomy of each one the Prophet had not the vaguest idea.  As he turned the handle of the door he felt like Sir Henry Stanley, when that intrepid explorer first set foot among the leafy habitations of the dwarfs.