When Gladys reached the Imperial that evening, she found that the staff had been battling with cockroaches all day, and that they had at last succeeded in getting rid of them with a fumigation mixture of camphor, cocculus, sulphur, bezonia and assafoetida—­suggested to them by a Hindoo student.

For the next week not a beetle was to be seen at the theatre nor at the Cottage; and Gladys was beginning to hope that Hamar had ceased plaguing her (in despair of ever winning her), when the persecutions suddenly broke out again.

She had been in bed about half an hour, and was falling into a gentle and much needed sleep, when a tremendous rap at the wall, close to her head, awoke her with a start, and set her heart pulsating violently.  Thinking it must be some one on the landing, she got up and lit a candle.  There was no one there.  The moment she got into bed again, the rapping was repeated, and it continued, at intervals, all night.  This went on for a week, during which time Gladys was never once able to sleep.

A brief respite ensued; but it was abruptly terminated one morning, when Gladys awoke feeling as if some big insect were attempting to penetrate her body.  Uttering a shriek of terror, she whipped the clothes from her, and sprang out of bed.  Miss Templeton, who slept in the next room, came rushing in, and they both saw an enormous insect, half beetle and half scorpion, dart under the pillow.  John Martin was fetched, but although he searched everywhere, not a trace of the insect could be found.

That night, directly Gladys got in bed and blew out the light, she heard a ticking sound on the sheets, and a huge insect with long hairy legs ran up her sleeve.  Her shrieks brought the whole household to the room, but the insect was nowhere to be seen.

She was thus plagued for nearly a fortnight.  One insect only—­never a number, but only one, of prodigious size and terrifying form—­appeared to her in the least suspected places, i.e., on the dressing-table or chimney-piece, in her shoes, or pockets; crawled over her in the dark; and could never be caught.

These perpetual frights, and consequent sleeplessness, wore Gladys out.  She grew so ill that she had to give up acting, and go into a home to try the rest cure.

Hamar then communicated with her, through a third person, and offered to leave off tormenting her, if she would agree to be engaged to him.

“I never will!” she said.

“Then I will never leave off persecuting you,” was his retort.

But he was wary.  He had no wish to kill her or to damage her looks—­so he let her get well and remain thus for a brief space.  When she was once again in full vigour, acting at the Imperial, he recommenced his unwelcome attentions.

At first he confined his new plague to the servants at the Cottage.  The cook was one day turning out a drawer in the kitchen dresser, when she was horrified out of her senses to find squatting there, a large, black toad, which stared most malevolently at her, and then sprang in her face.  She shrieked to the housemaid to help her kill it, but before a weapon could be got, the creature had bounced through an open window, and disappeared.