Minute after minute passed unnoticed as she stood in the old library, and she gave quite a start, and her hand fell to her side, as a door opened again, and this time she heard voices. "Has Isabel forgotten me?" she said to herself, as steps crossed the marble floor again, another door was opened and closed, and she stood listening and expectant. Then there was a quick, light step, the library door was thrust open, and she turned eagerly to greet Isabel, but started back in alarm on finding herself face to face with Alison, who quickly shut the door and advanced toward her with a meaning smile upon his countenance, which she could see was slightly flushed by the wine of which he had partaken freely. A minute later Neil entered the room and seemed blinded by the passion which surged up in his labouring breast. CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT. SIR CHELTNAM EXPOSED. "What will he do? what will he say?" panted Elisia, as she hurried across the hall to reach the stairs. Her customary calmness was gone, and one moment she was wild with excitement, the next her heart was sinking in despair. "I'll run back," she thought, as she stopped short. "It was cowardly to go and leave him." She took a couple of steps back, for a great dread had assailed her; those two brothers were face to face! What might not happen! and she the cause. She was half way back to the library, when a hand was laid upon the door, and in her dread she stopped short, turned, and was making for the stairs, but, feeling that she would be in full view of whoever left the room, she ran swiftly over the marble floor to the large _portiere_ at the end of the hall, and entered the great conservatory which ran all along that side of the house, library and drawing room opening into it as well. With her heart beating heavily, she had hardly found refuge among the broad leaves of the great exotics when she heard a quick step crossing the hall, and she shrank farther away. "Neil," she said to herself; "and he is coming to drag me back to face his brother." But even as she thought thus the sound ceased, and she knew that he had once more ascended the stairs. She stood there in the semi-darkness, hardly daring to breathe, till she felt that Neil must have reached his room; and then, with a feeling of utter desolation oppressing her,--a misery greater than she could bear,--she turned toward the hall, dimly conscious that someone was speaking in the drawing room, for the voice came through the open window at the far end of the conservatory. But it was nothing to her; only someone to avoid. Neil had surprised her with his brother--that was all her brain would bear; and, trying to think what she should do next, she had nearly reached the hall when she stopped short, with her cheeks flushing, and a sensation of anger which mastered everything else rising in her breast.