The roll of letters was a black mass spangled over with sparks and corroding lines of fire when Mrs. Jael came in with the hood of her cloak turned back. She waited till Rogers had closed the door, and even then looked at it suspiciously, as though afraid that the fellow might be listening. Stephen Gore understood her meaning. He opened it, found the passage empty, and, closing the door again, stood with his back to it and his hand upon the latch. “Your message?” Mrs. Jael fidgeted her arms under her cloak, and looked hot and a little scared. “My lady has sent me, my lord—” “Well, well?” “She must see you to-night; she will take no denial; I am bidden to bring you back.” Stephen Gore frowned at her didactic tone and the menace in her manner. “Indeed!” “She cannot bear it alone, my lord; she must speak with you; we fear that she is dying.” “Dying?” “Yes, sir; yes—don’t curl your mouth at me. She bade me say that unless you come to her, she will—” The expression of my lord’s face so frightened Mrs. Jael that her voice faltered away into an almost inaudible murmur. He stood staring at her, his flushed face seamed with the passions of a man whose courage and patience had already suffered, and on whom all the hazards of life were falling in one and the same hour. “I will come.” He pressed back his shoulders, steadied his dignity, and crossed the room to where hat, cloak, and sword lay on a carved chair. His hands fumbled with the tags of the cloak as he fastened them. Mrs. Jael kept her distance as he walked toward the door, for there was a look in my lord’s eyes that night that made her afraid of him. He was as a man driven to bay, and ready to stab at any one who should venture too near his person. Stephen Gore walked the short distance to Anne Purcell’s house in grim silence, heartily cursing all women, and in no mood to humor a sick sinner. The whole thing was accursedly vexatious and inopportune, and he hardened himself against all sentiment with the savage impatience of a man who is harassed and menaced on every quarter. Mrs. Jael was a snivelling fool, an emotional creature who had helped to froth up her mistress’s panic. Both of them, no doubt, needed ice to their heads, and a couple of gags to keep them quiet. Yet the great house was so solemn and dim and silent, and the woman’s manner in tragic keeping therewith, that Stephen Gore felt chilled and uneasy as he followed her flickering candle up the stairs. The place seemed ghostly and deserted, full of dark corners, draughts, and mysterious empty rooms. Stephen Gore had come in with his pulses thrumming lustily, and the hot intent to put all this meddlesome nonsense out of his path. But the house had much of the eeriness of a moorland in a fog, with quags ready to suck at a man’s feet, and a strange, vast silence to unnerve him.