“Come back to the house. It is too late to be out,” was all Heriot could find to say. He turned away that he might not see the shame and agony in her distorted face. “He whispered,” she cried, distracted. “I couldn’t hear. Why, besides the money, does his uncle want him to marry her?” “His uncle!” Heriot exclaimed. He was glad as he had not often been that he had heard all that had been said, or not for a hundred oaths from her would he have believed this woman knew nothing of the dirty work Erle had on hand. And he had wronged her enough by judging her. If it had not been for his self-righteousness she would have told him everything long ago. “That wasn’t his uncle. That was his father, Lord Erceldonne! He is not Egerton at all.” CHAPTER XXIII. THE CRY IN THE STARLIGHT. “Erceldonne!” the world swam with her. For how many years had that name been her terror, its owner her evil genius. Sometimes it had been clear even to her blinded eyes that his anger was used as a pretext for not acknowledging her, and again she had known when he had really put pressure on his son, and nothing but a dogged, cross-grained temper had kept Raimond from giving her up. And here she was taking his money, the paid servant of the man who had ruined her life; for if it had not been for the fear of disinheritance, Raimond would have married her openly in the days when love was young. And Erceldonne---- To Heriot’s horror, she broke out into a harsh scream of laughter. What would Erceldonne say if he knew the very woman he had been at his wit’s end to get rid of had been brought by his own accord under his very roof? She turned to Heriot, wiping away the tears born of that horrible, mirthless laughter. “What a merry-andrew patchwork it is!” she cried. “‘Three blind mice, see how they run’--now you come in, and then Raimond and the others; we’re all in the dreadful round. And by and by the farmer’s wife will come and cut all our tails off! Why don’t you laugh?” she cried wildly. He might have answered with perfect truth, because there was nothing further from his mind than laughter. Here in the fast-growing gloom of the cypress thicket, where Andria’s face was already but a patch of white against the dark foliage, they were half a mile from the house; and he knew now what the dangers were in this place after nightfall. The very man who had brought two women here had not cared to stay and face them. “What a fool I was to lie low!” he thought angrily. “If I had appeared at first everything would have had to be open and aboveboard. Now, I can’t come out after slinking away as I did. I wonder why I listened to that child?” But he knew quite well why he had listened. From the very first day her slow, soft voice, her strange eyes, had bewitched him. It was for more than Andria’s sake that he was aghast at the cold wickedness of the man who was pleased to call himself Egerton.