"Templeton," he said, "I rely on you to obey me implicitly. It is necessary that neither Mr. Francis nor Sanders know I am here. Things which I can not yet tell you may depend on this. And see to this: let me have the room I had before, and put his lordship into the room opening from it. Lock the door of it which leads into the passage, and lose the key, so that the only entrance is through my room. If he asks why his room is changed, make any paltry excuse: say the electric light in his room is gone wrong--anything. But make his usual room look as if it was occupied; go up there during dinner, turn down the bed, put a nightshirt on it, and leave a sponge, brushes, and so on."
"Master Harry!" gasped the butler, his mind suddenly reverting to old days.
"Come," he said, "do not get out of hand like that. Do as I bid you, and try to look yourself. I can tell you no more."
Harry came down from the sick room a few minutes later, with a brow markedly clearer.
"He is much better, ever so much better, Sanders thinks," he said. "He was sleeping, but when he wakes he will be told I have come."
"Ah! that is good," said the doctor. "Did Sanders tell you about the attack?"
"Yes, it came on while he was dressing this morning. Luckily, Sanders was with him; but for an hour, he tells me, he thought that every breath might be his last. He's a trump, that man, and there's a head on his shoulders too. He has hardly left him for five minutes."
"Will Sanders sleep in his room to-night?" asked the doctor.
"Yes, he has his meals brought to him there too, so that it will be easy for you not to be seen by him, since you make such a point of it. Oh, thank God, he is so much better! Ah, look! we are going to have one of those curious low mists to-night."
The doctor followed Harry to one of the windows which Templeton had left unshuttered, and looked out.
The autumn twilight was fast closing in, and after the hot sun of the day, the mist, in the sudden coolness of its withdrawal, was forming very thickly and rapidly over the lake. There was a little draught of wind toward the house, not sufficient to disperse it, but only to slide it gently, like a sheet, over the lawns. It lay very low, in thickness not perhaps exceeding five feet over the higher stretches of the lawn, but as the surface of it was level, it must have been some few feet thicker where the ground declined toward the lake. It appeared to be of extraordinary density, and spread very swiftly and steadily, so that even while they watched, it had pushed on till, like flood water, it struck the wall of the house, and presently lawn and lake were both entirely vanished, and they looked out, as from a mountain-top, over a level sea of cloud, pricked here and there by plantations and the higher shrubs. Above, the night was clear, and a young moon rode high in a heaven that silently filled with stars.