“The same; him whom I pointed out. Quick, bring him hither.”
My curiosity was too much roused to disobey. Had I conceived that Margrave, in the heat of youth, had committed some offence which placed him in danger of the law and in the power of Sir Philip Derval, I possessed enough of the old borderer’s black-mail loyalty to have given the man whose hand I had familiarly clasped a hint and a help to escape. But all Sir Philip’s talk had been so out of the reach of common-sense, that I rather expected to see him confounded by some egregious illusion than Margrave exposed to any well-grounded accusation. All, then, that I felt as I walked into the ballroom and approached Margrave was that curiosity which, I think, any one of my readers will acknowledge that, in my position, he himself would have felt.
Margrave was standing near the dancers, not joining them, but talking with a young couple in the ring. I drew him aside.
“Come with me for a few minutes into the museum; I wish to talk to you.”
“What about,—an experiment?”
“Yes, an experiment.”
“Then I am at your service.”
In a minute more, he had followed me into the desolate dead museum. I looked round, but did not see Sir Philip.