Thank you--and good-night.' She and Benson avoided looking at each other; and the maid was far too highly trained to betray any knowledge she was not asked for.

But when she had taken her departure Lucy slipped out of bed, turned the key, and tightened the bolts herself.

It was true that their sockets in the brick floor were almost worn away; and the lock-case seemed scarcely to hold upon the rotten wood.

The wood-work, indeed, throughout the whole villa was not only old and worm-eaten, but it had been originally of the rudest description, meant for summer uses, and a villeggiatura existence in which privacy was of small account.

The Malestrini who had reared the villa above the Campagna in the late seventeenth century had no money to waste on the superfluities of doors that fitted and windows that shut; he had spent all he had, and more, on the sprawling _putti_ and fruit wreaths of the ceilings, and the arabesques of the walls.