Alone in my own house, knowing nothing of its geography, having no notion how to summon the brute domestics--if, indeed, the dwelling were furnished with those useful creatures, without whom a Martial household would be signally incomplete--I could only look for the spring that opened the principal door.

This should lead into the gallery which, as I judged, must divide the hall and the front apartments from those looking into the peristyle.

Having found and pressed this spring, the door opened on a gallery longer, wider, and more elaborately ornamented than that of the only Martial mansions into which I had been hitherto admitted.

Looking round in no little perplexity, I observed a niche in which stood a statue of white relieved by a scarlet background; and beside this statue, crouching and half hidden, a slight pink object, looking at first like a bundle of drapery, but which in a moment sprang up, and, catching my hand, made me aware that Eveena had been waiting for me.
"I beg you," she said with an earnestness I could not understand, "I beg you to come _this_ way," leading me to the right, for I had turned instinctively to the left in entering the gallery, perhaps because my room in Esmo's house had lain in that direction.

Reaching the end of the gallery, she turned into one of the inner apartments; and as the door closed behind us, I felt that she was sinking to the ground, as if the agitation she had manifested in the hall, controlled till her object was accomplished, had now overpowered her.