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ONE detail of this mischancy episode occasioned me considerable perplexity. Conjecture as I might, I could hit upon no cause or explanation of it that seemed in any degree feasible. The astonishment of Otto Krax I attributed, and, as I afterwards discovered, rightly attributed, to the appearance of Lady Tracy so pat upon the discussion of her picture, and to my expressed desire to present her to the Countess within a few minutes of strenuously denying her acquaintance; and I deemed it not extravagant. That he recognised her as the object of his master's capricious fancy at Bristol, I considered most improbable. For I remembered how successfully the intrigue had been concealed; so that even Julian himself came over-late to the knowledge of it. His second exclamation on the stairs I set down to the probability that he had perceived Lady Tracy was on the point of swooning.
It was indeed the fact of the lady's swoon which troubled me. Her natural repugnance to meeting the Countess was not motive enough. Nor did I believe her sufficiently sensible to shame for that feeling to work on her to such purpose. It seemed of a piece with the terror which she had subsequently shown on her recovery. The miniature, I conjectured, had something, if not everything to do with it. Resolving wisely that I had best ascertain the top and bottom of the matter, I called upon Marston at his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, close to the new college of Franciscans, and asked where his sister stayed, on the plea that I would fain pay my respects to her, and assure myself of her convalescence.