"I wish he'd get rid of him altogether," my companion replied. "I dislike the fellow more and more every time I see him."
"Why should you? He does you no harm!"
"It's not that," said Glenbarth. "My dislike to him is instinctive; just as one shudders when one looks into the face of a snake, or as one is repelled by a toad or a rat. In spite of his present apparent respectability, I should not be at all surprised to hear that at some period of his career he had committed murders innumerable."
"Nonsense, nonsense," I replied, "you must not imagine such things as that. You were jealous when you first saw him, because you thought he was going to come between you and Miss Trevor. You have never been able to overcome the feeling, and this continued dislike is the result. You must fight against it. Doubtless, when you have seen more of him, you will like him better."
"I shall never like him better than I do now," he answered, with conviction. "As they say in the plays, 'my gorge rises at him!' If you saw him in the light I do, you would not let Lady Hatteras——"
"My dear fellow," I began, rising from my chair and interrupting him, "this is theatrical and very ridiculous, and I assume the right of an old friend to tell you so. If you prefer not to go to-night, I'll make some excuse for you, but don't, for goodness' sake, go and make things unpleasant for us all while you're there."
"I have no desire to do so," he replied stiffly. "What is more, I am not going to let you go alone. Write your letter and accept for us both. Bother Nikola and Martinos as well, I wish they were both on the other side of the world."
I thereupon wrote a note to Nikola accepting, on Glenbarth's behalf and my own, his invitation to dinner for that evening. Then I dismissed the matter from my mind for the time being. An hour or so later my wife came to me with a serious face.
"I am afraid, Dick, that there is something the matter with Gertrude," she said. "She has gone to her room to lie down, complaining of a very bad headache and a numbness in all her limbs. I have done what I can for her, but if she does not get better by lunch-time, I think I shall send for a doctor."
As, by lunch-time, she was no better, the services of an English doctor were called in. His report to my wife was certainly a puzzling one. He declared he could discover nothing the matter with the girl, nor anything to account for the mysterious symptoms.