When Picotee gently thrust open the door she was surprised to find the room in darkness, the fire gone completely out, and the form of Christopher only visible by a faint patch of light, which, coming from a lamp on the opposite side of the way and falling upon the mirror, was thrown as a pale nebulosity upon his shoulder.  Picotee was too flurried at sight of the familiar outline to know what to do, and, instead of going or calling for a light, she mechanically advanced into the room.  Christopher did not turn or move in any way, and then she perceived that he had begun to doze in his chair.

Instantly, with the precipitancy of the timorous, she said, ‘Mr. Julian!’ and touched him on the shoulder—­murmuring then, ’O, I beg pardon, I—­I will get a light.’

Christopher’s consciousness returned, and his first act, before rising, was to exclaim, in a confused manner, ’Ah—­you have come—­thank you, Berta!’ then impulsively to seize her hand, as it hung beside his head, and kiss it passionately.  He stood up, still holding her fingers.

Picotee gasped out something, but was completely deprived of articulate utterance, and in another moment being unable to control herself at this sort of first meeting with the man she had gone through fire and water to be near, and more particularly by the overpowering kiss upon her hand, burst into hysterical sobbing.  Julian, in his inability to imagine so much emotion—­or at least the exhibition of it—­in Ethelberta, gently drew Picotee further forward by the hand he held, and utilized the solitary spot of light from the mirror by making it fall upon her face.  Recognizing the childish features, he at once, with an exclamation, dropped her hand and started back.  Being in point of fact a complete bundle of nerves and nothing else, his thin figure shook like a harp-string in painful excitement at a contretemps which would scarcely have quickened the pulse of an ordinary man.

Poor Picotee, feeling herself in the wind of a civil d—–­, started back also, sobbing more than ever.  It was a little too much that the first result of his discovery of the mistake should be absolute repulse.  She leant against the mantelpiece, when Julian, much bewildered at her superfluity of emotion, assisted her to a seat in sheer humanity.  But Christopher was by no means pleased when he again thought round the circle of circumstances.

‘How could you allow such an absurd thing to happen?’ he said, in a stern, though trembling voice.  ’You knew I might mistake.  I had no idea you were in the house:  I thought you were miles away, at Sandbourne or somewhere!  But I see:  it is just done for a joke, ha-ha!’

This made Picotee rather worse still.  ‘O-O-O-O!’ she replied, in the tone of pouring from a bottle.  ’What shall I do-o-o-o!  It is—­not done for a—­joke at all-l-l-l!’

’Not done for a joke?  Then never mind—­don’t cry, Picotee.  What was it done for, I wonder?’