Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 2.djvu/176

162 recovered himself. "Why do you ask, if you've a supreme duty?"

"I haven't one—worse luck. I've fifty."

Dennis fixed his eyes on the watch. "Does that mean you can keep the thing quiet?"

The Doctor put his talisman away. "Before I say I must know what you'll do for me."

Dennis stared at the lamp. "Hasn't it gone too far?"

"I know how far: not so far, by a peculiar mercy, as it might have gone. There has been an extraordinary coincidence of chances—a miracle of conditions. Everything appears to serve." He hesitated; then with great gravity: "We'll call it a providence and have done with it."

Dennis turned this over. "Do you allude to the absence of witnesses?"

"At the moment the child was found. Only the blessed three of us. And she had been there" Stupefaction left him counting.

Dennis jerked out a sick protest. "Don't tell me how long! What do I want?" What he wanted proved, the next moment, to be more knowledge. "How do you meet the servants?"