"Good-bye, Cecil. I'll write. Good-bye." He looked up
with a hazy smile.

"G'night," he muttered thickly.

Without another word or so much as a glance at Lady Bazelhurst,
Penelope Drake went swiftly from the room. The big hall clock struck
the half-hour after eleven. Some one--a woman--was laughing in the
billiard-room below; the click of the balls came to her ears like
the snapping of angry teeth. She did not hesitate; it was not in
her nature. The room in which she had found so much delight was now
loathsome to her. With nervous fingers she threw the small things
she most cherished into a bag--her purse, her jewels, her little
treasures. Somehow it seemed to her as if she were hurrying to catch a
night train, that was all. With her own strong young arms she dragged
the two huge trunks from the closet. Half an hour later they were full
and locked. Then she looked about with a dry, mirthless smile.

"I wonder where I _am_ to go?" she murmured, half aloud, A momentary
feeling of indecision attacked her. The click of the balls had ceased,
the clock had struck twelve. It was dark and still, and the wind was
crying in the trees.

* * * * *

"She won't go," Lady Bazelhurst was saying to herself, as she sat,
narrow-eyed and hateful, in her window looking out into the night.
"Life is too easy here." The light from the porch lanterns cast a
feeble glow out beyond the porte-cochere and down the drive. As
she stared across the circle, the figure of a woman suddenly cut a
diametric line through it, and lost itself in the wall of blackness
that formed the circumference. Lady Evelyn started and stared
unbelievingly into the darkness, striving to penetrate it with her
gaze.

"It was she--Penelope," she cried, coming to her feet. "She's really
gone--she meant it." For many minutes she peered out into the night,
expecting to see the shadow returning. A touch of anxious hope
possessing her, she left the window and hurried down the corridor to
Penelope's room. What she found there was most convincing. It was
not a trick of the lanterns. The shadow had been real. It must be
confessed that the peevish heart of Lady Bazelhurst beat rather
rapidly as she hastened back to the window to peer anxiously out into
the sombre park with its hooting owls and chattering night-bugs. The
mournful yelp of a distant dog floated across the black valley.
The watcher shuddered as she recalled stories of panthers that ha