'Was he ill?'

'Not that I'm aware of.'

'It wasn't in a hospital?'

'A hospital! Edith, what is it you are driving at?'

'Nor in any place of the kind?'

'Are you suggesting that I dragged him from a sick bed to die for our benefit? Because, if so, let me assure you that when I first saw him I had no notion that anything ailed him, or that he was any nearer death than I am.'

'Well, Douglas, I won't worry you now, because I know that you are already worried about something, the burden of which I hope that one day you'll share with me.'

So she went, leaving me in a condition of mental unrest to which I had never supposed I could have fallen a prey. I could not shake off that ridiculous feeling that I had for company the silent figure on the bed; the dead man who was not dead. The interview with Edith invested him with a new significance. Already she suspected that there was more in the matter than met the eye. Was I so poor an actor? Had I so wholly failed to profit by the great example which had been set me? If it was Edith now, when would it be Violet and Reggie? If either of them gained the faintest inkling of the actual state of affairs, what would become of my house of cards, and of me? How infinitely worse would my latter state be than my first! I had never, so far as I knew, done a dishonourable thing till then. Now, on a sudden, here I was, tilting against the laws both of God and man. If I had a fall, there would be an end of me.

The next day I was busied about a multitude of things. The story had already got about, thanks, I imagine, to the people at the hotel; as a consequence I was inundated with inquiries, to some of which I was compelled to give personal attention. For instance, Morris Acrodato--grown old, but still relentless--came, assuring me that he had that unfortunate bill of Twickenham's in his pocket, and wanting to know--if he did not take out a warrant to arrest the corpse, if his claim would be favourably considered by the succeeding peer. Over and over again both Reggie and I had begged Foster to pay him what he asked, and so silence him so far as he could be silenced; but with equal persistency he had retorted by requesting us to furnish him with Twickenham's instructions to do as we desired. So after fifteen years Acrodato was still waiting for his money or his man. A portentous sum the amount which he demanded had become. Although I laughed at his notion of arresting a dead man--we are not in Sheridan's days, when a corpse was seizable--I had no hesitation in giving him my personal assurance that all should be done for him which equity called for. He rather pulled a face at my allusion to equity, that being hardly the point of view from which he wished his case to be regarded.

Try as I would, I could not get through the things which had to be done at anything like the rate which I desired, the result being that the afternoon was already well advanced before I was able to make my promised visit to Cortin's Hotel.