Much alarmed for her, I bade her return at once to her room.

She obeyed as of course, equally of course surprised and a little mortified; while I, marvelling by what conceivable means the plague of Cairo or Constantinople could have been conveyed across forty million miles of space and some two years of Earthly time, paced the peristyle for a few minutes.

As I did so, my eye fell on the roses which grew just where chance arrested my steps.

If they do not afford an explanation which scientific medicine will admit, I can suggest no other.

But, if it were so, how fearfully true the warning!--by what a mysterious fate did death dog my footsteps, and "blood haunt the life of blood!" The reader may not remember that the central chamber of the women's apartments, next to which was Eunane's, had been left vacant.