“What do you believe?” the doctor asked bluntly.

“I would rather not tell you at the present moment,” Dominey answered.  “It would sound too fantastic.”

“Your note this afternoon spoke of urgency,” the doctor observed.

“The matter is urgent.  I want you to do me a great favour—­to remain here all night.”

“You are expecting something to happen?”

“I wish, at any rate, to be prepared.”

“I’ll stay, with pleasure,” the doctor promised.  “You can lend me some paraphernalia, I suppose?  And give me a shake-down somewhere near Lady Dominey’s.  By-the-by,” he began, and hesitated.

“I have followed your advice, or rather your orders,” Dominey interrupted, a little harshly.  “It has not always been easy, especially in London, where Rosamund is away from these associations.—­I am hoping great things from what may happen to-night, or very soon.”

The doctor nodded sympathetically.

“I shouldn’t wonder if you weren’t on the right track,” he declared.

Rosamund came in through the window to them and seated herself by Dominey’s side.

“Why are you two whispering like conspirators?” she demanded.

“Because we are conspirators,” he replied lightly.  “I have persuaded Doctor Harrison to stay the night.  He would like a room in our wing.  Will you let the maids know, dear?”

She nodded thoughtfully.

“Of course!  There are several rooms quite ready.  Mrs. Midgeley thought that we might be bringing down some guests.  I am quite sure that we can make Doctor Harrison comfortable.”

“No doubt about that, Lady Dominey,” the doctor declared.  “Let me be as near to your apartment as possible.”

There was a shade of anxiety in her face.

“You think that to-night something will happen?” she asked.

“To-night, or one night very soon,” Dominey assented.  “It is just as well for you to be prepared.  You will not be afraid, dear?  You will have the doctor on one side of you and me on the other.”

“I am only afraid of one thing,” she answered a little enigmatically.  “I have been so happy lately.”

Dominey, changed into ordinary morning clothes, with a thick cord tied round his body, a revolver in his pocket, and a loaded stick in his hand, spent the remainder of the night and part of the early morning concealed behind a great clump of rhododendrons, his eyes fixed upon the shadowy stretch of park which lay between the house and the Black Wood.  The night was moonless but clear, and when his eyes were once accustomed to the pale but sombre twilight, the whole landscape and the moving objects upon it were dimly visible.  The habits of his years of bush life seemed instinctively, in those few hours of waiting, to have reestablished themselves.  Every sense was strained and active; every night sound—­of which the hooting of some owls, disturbed from their lurking place in the Black Wood, was predominant—­heard