staircase, and burst into the
breakfast room, her face mottled with terror, her hand spread above her
heart to still its wild beating.

"My lady! My lady! The door's locked. I can get no answer. I am afraid."

Sir Chichester rose abruptly from his chair. But Jenny Prask had more to
say.

"The key had been removed. My lady, I looked through the keyhole. The
lights are still burning in the room."

"Oh!"

Martin Hillyard had started to his feet. He remembered another time when
the lights had been burning in Stella Croyle's room in the full blaze of
a summer morning. She was sitting at the writing-table then. She had
been sitting there all through the night making meaningless signs and
figures upon the paper and the blotting-pad in front of her. The full
significance of that flight of the unhappy Stella to the little hotel
below the Hog's Back was now revealed to him. But between that morning
and this, there was an enormous difference. She had opened her door then
in answer to the knocking.

"We must get through that door, Lady Splay," he said. Sir Chichester was
already up and about in a busy agitation.

"Yes, to be sure. It's just an ordinary lock. We shall easily find a key
to fit it. I'll take Harper with me, and perhaps, Millie, you will
come."

"Yes, I'll come," said Millie quietly. After her first shock of horror
and surprise when she had first chanced upon the paragraph in the
_Harpoon_, she had been completely, wonderfully, mistress of herself.

"The rest of you will please stay downstairs," said Sir Chichester, as
he removed the key from the door of the room. Jenny Prask was not thus
to be disposed of.

"Oh, my lady, I must go up too!" she cried, twisting her hands together.
"Mrs. Croyle was always very kind to me, poor lady. I must come!"

"She won't keep her head," Sir Chichester objected, who was fast losing
his. But Milly Splay laid her hand upon the girl's arm.

"Yes, you shall come with us, Jenny," she said gently, and the four of
them moved out of the room.

The others followed them as far as the hall, and stood grouped at the
foot of the staircase.

"Miranda, would you like to go out into the air?" Dennis Brown asked
with solicitude of his wife.

"No, dear, I am all right. I--oh, poor woman!" and with a sob she
dropped her face in her hands.

"Hush!" Luttrell called sharply for silence, and a moment afterwards, a
loud shrill scream rent the air like lightning.

Miranda cowered from