C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

“ There she lay, sunk in drugged and drunken sleep, the woman of mystery in whose existence no one but Shelagh and I had ever quite believed—the woman who had visited us in our sleep that night at the Abbey and who, almost certainly, had fired the Abbey, hoping that we and the Barlows might suffocate in our beds. ”

“ Besides, I couldn't think of a person likely to play a trick on me. Certainly my host wouldn't. Shelagh, my best and most intimate friend, was far too gentle and sensitive-minded for anything of the kind. And none of the other guests were of the noisy, bounding sort who will take liberties even with quite distant acquaintances for fun.
All this ran through my mind quickly as a cinema cut on the screen, and it wasn't until I'd mentally passed in review the character of all my fellow guests that I summoned courage to pull back the curtains which hid the bed. ”

“ This deserved the name of a double brightening act, for I brightened the lives of his fellow guests by saving them from him, and I brightened his by encouraging him to talk of well-connected people.
“Who was she before she married Lord Thingumbob?” or, “Yes, she was a Miss So-and-so, a cousin of the Duke of Dinkum,” might have been heard issuing sapiently from our lips had any one been mentally destitute enough to eavesdrop. But I had my reward. Dear little Shelagh and Roger Fane seemed to have cheered each other. ”

“ I hope and trust that I have a sense of humor, and I can laugh at a jest against myself as well as any woman, perhaps better than most. But to-night I was in no mood to laugh at any kind of jest, and I wondered how anybody on board had possessed the heart, not to mention the cheek, to perpetrate one after the shock we had all experienced. ”