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Stockdale sighed, and said that he thought hers a mistaken generosity when it extended to assisting those who cheated the king of his dues. ‘At any rate, you will let me make him keep his distance as your lover, and tell him flatly that you are not for him?’

‘Please not, at present,’ she said. ‘I don’t wish to offend my old neighbours. It is not only Owlett who is concerned.’

‘This is too bad,’ said Stockdale impatiently.

‘On my honour, I won’t encourage him as my lover,’ Lizzy answered earnestly. ‘A reasonable man will be satisfied with that.’

‘Well, so I am,’ said Stockdale, his countenance clearing.

CHAPTER III. THE MYSTERIOUS GREATCOAT

Stockdale now began to notice more particularly a feature in the life of his fair landlady, which he had casually observed but scarcely ever thought of before. It was that she was markedly irregular in her hours of rising. For a week or two she would be tolerably punctual, reaching the ground-floor within a few minutes of half-past seven. Then suddenly she would not be visible till twelve at noon, perhaps for three or four days in succession; and twice he had certain proof that she did not leave her room till half-past three in the afternoon. The second time that this extreme lateness came under his notice was on a day when he had particularly wished to consult with her about his future movements; and he concluded, as he always had done, that she had a cold, headache, or other ailment, unless she had kept herself invisible to avoid meeting and talking to him, which he could hardly believe. The former supposition was disproved, however, by her innocently saying, some days later, when they were speaking on a question of health, that she had never had a moment’s heaviness, headache, or illness of any kind since the previous January twelvemonth.

‘I am glad to hear it,’ said he. ‘I thought quite otherwise.’

‘What, do I look sickly?’ she asked, turning up her face to show the impossibility of his gazing on it and holding such a belief for a moment.

‘Not at all; I merely thought so from your being sometimes obliged to keep your room through the best part of the day.’

‘O, as for that–it means nothing,’ she murmured, with a look which some might have called cold, and which was the worst look that he liked to see upon her. ‘It is pure sleepiness, Mr. Stockdale.’

‘Never!’

‘It is, I tell you. When I stay in my room till half-past three in the afternoon, you may always be sure that I slept soundly till three, or I shouldn’t have stayed there.’

‘It is dreadful,’ said Stockdale, thinking of the disastrous effects of such indulgence upon the household of a minister, should it become a habit of everyday occurrence.

‘But then,’ she said, divining his good and prescient thoughts, ‘it only happens when I stay awake all night. I don’t go to sleep till five or six in the morning sometimes.’

‘Ah, that’s another matter,’ said Stockdale. ‘Sleeplessness to such an alarming extent is real illness. Have you spoken to a doctor?’

‘O no–there is no need for doing that–it is all natural to me.’ And she went away without further remark.

Stockdale might have waited a long time to know the real cause of her sleeplessness, had it not happened that one dark night he was sitting in his bedroom jotting down notes for a sermon, which occupied him perfunctorily for a considerable time after the other members of the household had retired. He did not get to bed till one o’clock. Before he had fallen asleep he heard a knocking at the front door, first rather timidly performed, and then louder. Nobody answered it, and the person knocked again. As the house still remained undisturbed, Stockdale got out of bed, went to his window, which overlooked the door, and opening it, asked who was there.