This person told me all about him. His name is
Oliver Saffren, and he's in the charge of a very
large doctor and quite, quite mad!"

"Jean Ferret, the gardener," I said deUberately,
and with venom, "is fast acquiring notoriety in
these parts as an idiot of purest ray, and he had
his information from another whose continuance
unhanged is every hour more miraculous."

"How ruthless of you," cried Miss Elliott, with
exaggerated reproach, "when I have had such
a thrilling happiness all day in believing that riot-
ously beautiful creature mad! You are wholly
positive he isn't?"

Our dialogue was now all that delayed a general
departure from the table. This, combined with
the naive siuTprise I have mentioned, served to make
us temporarily the centre of attention, and, among
the faces turned toward me, my glance fell unexpect-



CHAPTER ELEVEN 151

edly upon one I had not seen since entering the din-
ing-room. Mrs. Harman had been placed at some
distance from me and on the same side of the table,
but now she leaned far back in her chair to look
at me, so that I saw her behind the shoulders of
the people between us. She was watching me with
an expression unmistakably of repressed anxiety and
excitement, and as our eyes met, hers shone with
a certain agitation, as of some odd consciousness
shared with me. It was so strangely, suddenly a re-
minder of the look of secret understanding given me
with good night, twenty-four hours earher, by the man
whose sanity was Miss Elliott's topic, that, puzzled
and almost disconcerted for the moment, I did not
at once reply to the lively young lady's question.
