Gnawing at her underlip, she entered her room, flung herself into a chair, and beat a tattoo with her foot. The door opened softly, and Burden stole in. She was very pale, there were dark marks under her eyes, and she trembled so violently that the brushes rattled together as she took them from the table. Lady Luce looked up at her angrily. "What is the matter with you?" she demanded. "You look more like a ghost than a human being, or as if you'd been drinking." Burden winced under the insult, and stole behind her mistress' chair; but Lady Luce faced round after her. "You're not fit to do my hair, or anything else!" she said. "What is the matter now? Your mother or one of your other relations, I suppose. You always have some excuse or other for your whims and fancies." "I--I am rather upset, my lady!" Burden responded, almost inaudibly. "The--the robbery----" "What does it concern you?" said Lady Luce sharply. "It is no affair of yours; your business is to wait upon me, and if you can't or won't do it properly----" The brush fell from Burden's uncertain hand, and Lady Luce sprang to her feet in a passion. "Oh, go away! Get out of my sight!" she said contemptuously. "Go down to the kitchen and tremble and shake with the other maids. I can't put up with you to-night." "I'm--I'm very sorry, my lady. I'm upset--everybody's upset." "Oh, go--go!" broke in Lady Luce impatiently. "If you are not better to-morrow, you'd better go for good!" Burden stood for a moment uncertainly; then, with a stifled sob, left the room, and went down the corridor toward the servants' apartments; but halfway she stopped, hesitated, then descended the back stairs and stole softly along one of the passages. A door from the smoking room opened on to this passage, and against this she leaned and listened. Sparling and the grooms who had joined in the pursuit of the burglars had come back full of the chase and its results, and there was an excited and dramatic recital going on in the servants' hall at that moment; but she dared not go there, though she was in an agony of anxiety to know the whole truth and the fate of her lover. Her face, her overwrought condition, would have betrayed her; so, at the least, would have caused surprise and aroused suspicion. She could not face the servants' hall, but she knew that the gentlemen would be discussing the affair in the smoking room, and that if she could listen unseen she should hear what had happened to Ted. It was Ted, and nothing, no one else she cared about. All the men were in the smoking room, and all were plying Drake with questions. Drake, knowing that he would have to go through it, was giving as concise an account of it as was possible. He was wearied to death, not only of the burglary, but of the emotions he had experienced, and his voice was low and his manner that of a man talking against his will; but Burden heard every word, for, at its lowest, Drake's voice was singularly clear.