"The young man in the velveteen suit, of course."
"I don't know what you mean."
"I mean, was he better-looking than Alec?"
"Better-looking than Alec? Why, of course, Alec isn't a bit——"
"Hempie!"
There was a pause, and then, to relieve the strain, the Hempie laughed. "Are you never going to get over it, Nance?"
"Get on with your story, and be sensible." I could hear a thread bitten through.
"So the lady began to talk to me in a quiet hushed tone, like a minister beside a sick bed. She told me how some years ago her poor husband, Major Fergus, had hart a dreadful accident. He was not only disfigured, but the shock had affected his brain.
"'At first,' she said, 'we thought of sending him to an asylum, but we could not find one exactly suited to his case. Besides which, his old nurse, Betty Hearseman, who had always had great influence with him, was wild to be allowed to look after him. She is not quite right in the head herself, but most faithful and kind. She cried out night and day that they were abusing him in the asylum. So at last he was brought here and placed in the old wing of the house, into which you penetrated by misadventure to-day.'
"'But the dog?' I asked; 'do they hunt the patient with a fierce dog like that?'