."

"Only a few words?"

"No"--she panted--"no!--Geoffrey, I shall _hate_ you if you don't
let me go!"

It seemed to her that everybody was in league to stand between her and
the one thing she craved for--to be alone and in the dark.

She snatched her dress out of his grasp, and he fell back.

She slipped into her own room, and locked the door. He shook his head,
and went slowly downstairs. He found Peter pacing the hall, and they went
out into the June dark together, a discomfited pair.

Meanwhile Mrs. Friend waited for Helena. She heard voices in the passage
and the locking of Helena's door. She was still weak from her illness, so
it seemed wisest to get into bed. But she had no hope or intention of
sleep. She sat up in bed, with a shawl round her, certain that Helena
would come. She was in a ferment of pity and fear,--she scarcely knew
why--fear for the young creature she had come to love with all her heart;
and she strained her ears to catch the sound of an opening door.

But Helena did not come. Through her open window Lucy could hear steps
along the terrace coming and going--to and fro. Then they ceased; all
sounds in the house ceased. The church clock in the distance struck
midnight, and a little owl close to the house shrieked and wailed like a
human thing, to the torment of Lucy's nerves. A little later she was
aware of Buntingford coming upstairs, and going to his room on the
further side of the gallery.

Then, nothing. Deep silence--that seemed to flow through the house and
all its rooms and passages like a submerging flood.

Except!--What was that sound, in the room next to hers--in Helena's room?

Lucy Friend got up trembling, put on a dressing-gown, and laid an ear
to the wall between her and Helena. It was a thin wall, mostly indeed a
panelled partition, belonging to an old bit of the house, in which the
building was curiously uneven in quality--sometimes inexplicably
strong, and sometimes mere lath and plaster, as though the persons,
building or re-building, had come to an end of their money and were
scamping their work.

Lucy, from the other side of the panels, had often heard Helena singing
while she dressed, or chattering to the housemaid. She listened now in an
anguish, her mind haunted alternately by the recollection of the scene in
the drawing-room, and the story told by Geoffrey French, and by her
rising dread and misgiving as to Helena's personal stake in it. She had
observed much du