"Lord Helmstone couldn't be expected to put himself out. I _wish_ I had not let the servants go to bed!" she exclaimed. "Why didn't you think of it? Of course, _they_ should have gone and brought Bettina home." I saw now how right and proper this would have been. Half past eleven. "It is very strange," I said. "Go and look out again, you may see a lantern, or the motor-lamps." I leaned out into the fresh-smelling darkness, and I saw nothing, I heard nothing. I hung there, unwilling to draw in my head and admit the world without was empty of Bettina. She had been thrown out of the car. She was lying by the roadside somewhere, dead, that was why she didn't come home. Suddenly I thought of Gerald Boyne. What if, after all, he had been dining there. He would be sure to want to bring Bettina home. Yes, and those casual Helmstones would turn Bettina over to him without a thought. A man Ranny wouldn't let his sister dance with in a room full of her friends.... Bettina, setting out with Gerald Boyne to cross the lonely heath--and never reaching home. I knew all this was wild and foolish ... then why did these imaginings make me feel I could not bear the suspense another moment? I shut the window and turned round. "You must let me go for her," I said. The same suggestion must have been that moment on her lips. "Go, wake the servants," she said, "tell them to dress quickly. Get your cloak and light the lantern." She gave her short sharp directions. The young servant was to go with me. The old one was to lock the door behind us, and wait up with my mother. I went with a candle through silent passages, and knocked on doors. I left the lantern burning down in the hall, and in my cloak went back to my mother's room. She was leaning out, over the side of the bed listening. "Aren't they ready?" "They are only just roused." "Servants take ten times as long to dress as----Hark. Look out!" I went back to the window and peered between the close-drawn curtains, with hands at my temples on either side of my eyes. Nothing. Except.... Yes, I could hear the heavy step of the older woman down in the hall unlocking, unbolting, unchaining the door ... that the housemaid and I might lose no time when she was ready. The old woman must be waiting for us there below, with the lantern in her hand. A faint light was lying on the path. Not a sound now in all the world except my mother's voice behind me: "You will take the short cut." "Oh yes." "And as you go don't talk--_listen_." "Listen!" I echoed, with mounting horror. "What should I hear?" "How do we know?" A chill went down my back. The bedroom-door opened, and Bettina walked in. "Such a nice evening! They've been teaching me bridge. Why have you put on your cloak? Why are you looking--oh! what has happened to you?" Not very much was said to Bettina that night. She and two of the Helmstones' maids had come round by the orchard-gate, walking softly on the grass, "so as not to waken mother."