"You might have been with me," said Miss Blake, with an angry sneer.
"I wish I had," he answered. "I can never sufficiently deplore the fact of my absence. And you found the servants asleep?"
"Well, they seemed asleep," said the lady; "but that does not prove that they were so."
"Doubtless," he agreed. "Nevertheless, so far as you could judge, none of them looked as if they had been wandering up and down the corridors?"
"I could not judge one way or another," said Miss Blake: "for the tricks of English servants, it is impossible for anyone to be up to."
"Still, it did not occur to you at the time that any of them was feigning slumber?"
"I can't say it did. You see, I am naturally unsuspicious," explained Miss Blake, naively.
"Precisely so. And thus it happened that you were unable to confute Miss Elmsdale's fancy?"
"I told her she must have been dreaming," retorted Miss Blake. "People who wake all of a sudden often confound dreams with realities."
"And people who are not in the habit of awaking suddenly often do the same thing," agreed her questioner; "and so, Miss Blake, we will pass out of dreamland, and into daylight—or rather foglight. Do you recollect a particularly foggy day, when your niece, hearing a favourite dog moaning piteously, opened the door of the room where her father died, in order to let it out?"