I find him in the next chapter engaged in complicated psychological argument with French or German _savants_.

It appears--the author had forgotten to mention it before--that one summer a French, or German, or Italian refugee, as the case may happen to be, came to live in the hero's street: thus it is that the hero is able to talk fluently in the native language of that unhappy refugee.
I remember a melodrama visiting a country town where I was staying.

The heroine and child were sleeping peacefully in the customary attic.

For some reason not quite clear to me, the villain had set fire to the house.
He had been complaining through the three preceding acts of the heroine's coldness; maybe it was with some idea of warming her.

Escape by way of the staircase was impossible.