re
beyond his skill, had sent off, with Lady Linden's full approval, an
urgent message to a surgeon of repute, and now they were
waiting--waiting the issues of life and death.

The servants looked at the white-faced, distraught girl pityingly. They
remembered that she was to have been the dying man's wife. The whole
thing had been so sudden, was so shocking and tragic. No wonder that she
looked like death herself; they could not guess at the self-reproach,
the self-denunciation, nor could Lady Linden.

"No one," said her ladyship, "is to blame but me. It was my doing, my
own pig-headed folly. The boy told me that the horse was a brute, and
I--I said that he--if he hadn't the pluck to try and break him in--I
would find someone who would. I am his murderess!" her ladyship cried
tragically. "Yes, Marjorie, look at me--look at the murderess of the man
you love!"

"Aunt!"

"It is true. Revile me! I alone am guilty. I've robbed you of your
lover." Lady Linden was nearer to hysterics at this moment than ever in
her life.

"How long? how long?" she demanded impatiently. "How long will it be
before that fool comes?"

The fool was the celebrated surgeon wired for to London. He had wired
back that he was on his way; no man could do more.

But the waiting, the horrible waiting; the ceaseless watching and
listening for the sound of wheels, the strange hush that had fallen upon
the house, the knowledge that there in an upper chamber death was
waiting, waiting to take a young life.

Hours, every minute of which had seemed like hours themselves, hours had
passed. Lady Linden sat with her hands clenched and her eyes fixed on
nothingness. She blamed herself with all her honest hearty nature; she
blamed herself even more unsparingly than in the past she had blamed
others for their trifling faults.

Her self-recriminations had got on Marjorie's nerves. She could not bear
to sit here and listen to her aunt when all the time she knew that it
was she--she alone who was to blame. She had told him that she did not
love him, that all his hopes must end, that the future they had planned
between them should never be, and so had sent him to his death.

She waited outside in the big hall, her eyes on the stairs, her ears
tensioned to every sound from above, and at every sound she started.

Voices at last, low and muffled, voices pitched in a low key, men
talking as in deep confidence. She heard and she watched. She saw the
two men, th