at this end of the
journey, and Mrs. Murray at the other, this night has been a perfect
picnic of hot soup."

"It's not soup, Master Geoffrey, it's coffee," said Martin imperturbably.

"Oh, if it's coffee I am on for some. You must have some, too, Miss
Carson. You look a perfect wreck. I expect you have had a harder time of
it than we have."

Eleanor shook her head. His sympathetic tone made her lower lip tremble.
"I have done nothing all night--" she said, "but wait," she added.

"And awfully hard work that must have been by the look of you," he said;
"and where is everybody, Martin?"

"The mistress is in the drawing-room, Mr. Anstruther has gone down to the
police station, and the rest of the young ladies and gentlemen are in
bed. And I think, Mr. Geoffrey, if you and Miss Maud went to bed now,
too, it would be a good thing."

"Go to bed at half-past six in the morning! What an idea! Do you want to
go to bed, Maud?"

"No," she answered promptly; "but what I do want is a stinging hot bath.
That would freshen me up wonderfully. Come and have one, too, Miss
Carson. It would do you a world of good."

Eleanor did not feel as if she particularly wanted a hot bath at that
moment, but both Maud and Geoffrey so strongly advocated her taking one
that out of gratitude to them for the sympathy they evidently desired to
show her, she followed them upstairs. After all, she might as well have a
bath as do anything else; it would at least help to pass the time. And
when she had had her bath and done her hair, and was dressed and
downstairs again, she certainly felt wonderfully better for it. The
horrid sort of up-all-night feeling that she had experienced had quite
left her.

Presently the whole household was astir. Mrs. Danvers, firmly convinced
that she had been awake all night, left the drawing-room when the
housemaid entered it and went upstairs, intending to have a bath and
dress, but she went to bed instead.

To escape the curious eyes of the servants, who now seemed to be in every
room and to be regarding her with not unnatural curiosity, Eleanor
wandered out into the hall again and resumed the restless pacing to and
fro which she had kept up the greater part of the night. By eight o'clock
she seemed to have the principal sitting-rooms to herself. Geoffrey and
Maud had not yet come downstairs, and the servants, having finished their
dusting and sweeping, had gone to their breakfast.

Consequently when the teleph