“She is not absolutely unconscious,” said he.

“Would it not be well to use the knife while it will be painless?”

The same thought had crossed the surgeon’s mind.  He grasped the wounded lip with his forceps, and with two swift cuts he took out a broad V-shaped piece.  The woman sprang up on the couch with a dreadful gurgling scream.  Her covering was torn from her face.  It was a face that he knew.  In spite of that protruding upper lip and that slobber of blood, it was a face that he knew, She kept on putting her hand up to the gap and screaming.  Douglas Stone sat down at the foot of the couch with his knife and his forceps.  The room was whirling round, and he had felt something go like a ripping seam behind his ear.  A bystander would have said that his face was the more ghastly of the two.  As in a dream, or as if he had been looking at something at the play, he was conscious that the Turk’s hair and beard lay upon the table, and that Lord Sannox was leaning against the wall with his hand to his side, laughing silently.  The screams had died away now, and the dreadful head had dropped back again upon the pillow, but Douglas Stone still sat motionless, and Lord Sannox still chuckled quietly to himself.

“It was really very necessary for Marion, this operation,” said he, “not physically, but morally, you know, morally.”

Douglas Stone stooped for yards and began to play with the fringe of the coverlet.  His knife tinkled down upon the ground, but he still held the forceps and something more.

“I had long intended to make a little example,” said Lord Sannox, suavely.  “Your note of Wednesday miscarried, and I have it here in my pocket-book.  I took some pains in carrying out my idea.  The wound, by the way, was from nothing more dangerous than my signet ring.”

He glanced keenly at his silent companion, and cocked the small revolver which he held in his coat pocket.  But Douglas Stone was still picking at the coverlet.

“You see you have kept your appointment after all,” said Lord Sannox.

And at that Douglas Stone began to laugh.  He laughed long and loudly.  But Lord Sannox did not laugh now.  Something like fear sharpened and hardened his features.  He walked from the room, and he walked on tiptoe.  The old woman was waiting outside.

“Attend to your mistress when she awakes,” said Lord Sannox.

Then he went down to the street.  The cab was at the door, and the driver raised his hand to his hat.

“John,” said Lord Sannox, “you will take the doctor home first.  He will want leading downstairs, I think.  Tell his butler that he has been taken ill at a case.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Then you can take Lady Sannox home.”

“And how about yourself, sir?”

“Oh, my address for the next few months will be Hotel di Roma, Venice.  Just see that the letters are sent on.  And tell Stevens to exhibit all the purple chrysanthemums next Monday, and to wire me the result.”