ill hurried to and fro, the
hum of conversation was uninterrupted. And then suddenly it came--a cry
of breathless horror, of mortal unexpected agony--a cry, it seemed, of
death. The waiters stopped in their places to gaze breathlessly at the
spot from which the cry had come, a silver dish fell clattering from the
fingers of one, and its contents rolled unnoticed about the floor. The
murmur of voices, the rise and fall of laughter and speech, ceased as
though an unseen finger had been pressed upon the lips of everyone in
the room. Men rose in their places, women craned their necks. For a
second or two the whole place was like a tableau of arrested motion.
Then there was a rush towards the table across which the man had fallen,
a doubled-up heap. A few feet away, with only that narrow margin of
table-cloth between them, the girl sat and stared at him, still white
and panic-stricken, yet with a curious change in her face from which all
the dumb terror which had first attracted my attention seemed to have
passed away.

CHAPTER IV

The manager, who was very flurried, closed the door of the little room
into which the wounded man had been carried.

"Can you tell me his name, or shall we look for his card-case?" he
asked.

I glanced towards the child. She was by far the most composed of the
three. Only she remained with her back turned steadily upon the sofa.

"His name is Delahaye," she said; "Major Sir William Delahaye, I think
they called him."

"And where does he live--in London? Tell me his address. I will send a
cab there at once!"

"I do not know his address," the child answered. "I do not know where he
lives."

The manager stared at her.

"You were with him, were you not?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Then surely you must know something more about him than just his name?"

"He called himself my guardian. I believe that when I was very young he
took me to the convent where I have been ever since. Two days ago he
came to fetch me away."

"What is your name?"

"Isobel de Sorrens!"

"You are not related to him, then?"

She shuddered a little.

"I hope not," she said simply.

"Well, where was he taking you to?" the manager asked impatiently.
"Surely there must be someone I can send to."

"I believe that he has a house in London," the child said. "I really do
not know anything more. You could send to Madame Richard at the Convent
St. Argueil. I suppose she knows all about him. She told me that I was