"It--it only came into my head"; and then, with fresh courage, or renewed curiosity, "But I am right!" I said, with sudden firmness. "Isn't it so? You were horribly frightened, _weren't_ you?" I touched her hand, expecting she would draw it away from me, but the fingers had locked on the silk frill of the quilt. They were cold; they made me think of death. "Yes," she said, very low, "I was horribly frightened." I felt the shuddering that ran along her wrist, and the chill of that old fear of hers crept into my blood, too. She looked through me, as though I were vapour, as though the bodyless Dread her eyes were fixed on once again for that instant--as though _that_ were the most real presence in the room. "Tell me," I whispered, "tell me what it was." "----impossible to talk about such things." She drew away her hand. "All you need to know is ... the need of taking care. Of never running risks. What time is it?" "Five minutes past eleven." "Did Lady Helmstone say she and Hermione would walk back with Bettina?" "No, she didn't say that." "What did she say?" "Just that she would send Betty home." After some time she said quite suddenly: "That might mean alone in the motor." I was going to say "Why not?" But as I looked up from my work at the face under the candle light, a most foolish and indefinable fear flashed across my mind--a feeling too ridiculous to own--sudden, indefinable dread of that inoffensive man, the Helmstones' head chauffeur. I had no sooner cast out the childish thought than I remembered the two under men. One only a sort of motor-house "odd man." To that hangdog creature might fall the task of driving Betty home! I had thought of this man vaguely enough before, yet with some dash of human sympathy, for it was common talk that he was "put upon" by the other men. He was a weakling, and unhappy; now I suddenly felt him to be evil--desperate. Oh, why had I let Bettina go! Even if the chauffeurs, all three, were decent enough ordinarily, what if just to-night they had been drinking? Betty coming across the deserted heath with a drunken driver---- Oh, God, I prayed, don't let anything happen to Bettina.... * * * * * A quarter past eleven. I put on a bold face. "They wouldn't, I think, have a motor-car out for Betty at this hour, and the reason she is late is because she has told them she would like the walk." "They will hardly send a woman with her at this time of night." We both started violently, and all because a coal had fallen out of the grate on the metal fender. My mother was the first to speak: "They are haphazard people, I sometimes think.... You don't suppose they would send her back with a groom...?" I said I was sure they would not, though an hour before I would have asked, Why not?