"Unconsciously! What do you mean?"
"My dear, it is my duty to tell you that all sorts of people claim to have seen you wandering--sometimes actually running--through the woods of Exham Park at the most extraordinary hours, clad only in your nightdress. The suggestion is that you are walking in your sleep."
"Walking in my sleep? Mrs Forrester!"
"Yes, my dear, walking in your sleep. It is strange that the story should not have reached you; it is on everybody's tongue. But when, as I tell you, Briggs made that positive statement to me with his own lips, I felt it my bounden duty to come and see you about it at the earliest possible moment. Because, if there is any truth in the tale at all--and they can't all be liars--it is absolutely essential for your own protection that you should have someone to sleep with you--at any rate, in the same room. Somnambulism is a most serious thing. If you are a somnambulist--and if you aren't, what are you?--proper precautions ought to be taken, or goodness only knows what may happen."
"If I am a somnambulist, Mrs Forrester. But am I? In all my life I have never heard it hinted that I am anything of the kind, and I myself have never had any reason to suspect it."
"Still, my dear, there are all those stories told by all sorts of people."
"They may have imagined they saw something. I very much doubt if they saw me."
"But there is Briggs's positive assertion. I have such faith in Briggs. And why should he invent a tale of the sort?"
"Did he see my face?"
"No; he says you were walking quickly from him, almost running, but he is positive it was you. He wanted to come and tell you so himself; but I dissuaded him, feeling that it was a matter about which you would prefer that I should come and speak to you first."