“Mother, don’t look like that; don’t speak like that,” she implored, and even Miles Cylmer would not have known the voice was hers. “I did not mean it. I only said it from wickedness.” And all through that day that seemed unending, Ismay Trelane, eating, drinking, talking, was fighting a battle between the good and evil in her soul. Desperately, she thrust aside the importunate cry that rose in her mind, bidding her kneel down and cry it aloud with her lips. “Save me from myself!” Fiercely, she tried to kill the best impulse of her life, and harden her heart for the end. Cristiane, dead, could never get Cylmer back again, and Marcus Wray was doomed already. CHAPTER XXXII. “THE DEED IN THE DARK.” The house was dark as the grave; quiet as death. From somewhere a clock struck the hour with one solemn stroke, that clanged and echoed through the silent halls. Mrs. Trelane, lying sleepless in her bedroom, where she had been sent like a beaten dog by one glance from Wray, sprang up with causeless terror. Only the remembrance of Ismay’s locked door kept her from running to the girl for companionship, but she dared not stand outside that door, even for one minute, and knock in vain, with perhaps those awful steps behind her. Cowering in her pillows, she listened, but heard no more. Even to herself she would not own that what she feared was not so much the ghost, as what Marcus Wray might be going to do this night in the dark. For she had seen him look once at Cristiane that day, and the look held death in it. Once, earlier in the night, she had fancied she heard the noiseless tread of cautious feet, as though people passed her door silently. She had looked out, then, and seen nothing but Ismay, pale as death itself, standing alone in the still lighted hall. “What’s the matter?” the girl said. “Don’t say you want me, because I’m going to bed,” and she went into her room and locked the door carelessly, as though death and retribution were left outside. There were quiet steps again now, but Mrs. Trelane’s fingers were in her ears, and she never heard them. Marcus Wray and Cristiane had come up silently, he with a light in one hand, the other round Cristiane’s waist, that terror might not make her break away from him. Frightened she was, but like a child who enjoys a game that startles it, but also a little afraid of the arm that was so grimly protective. It was amusing to be hunting ghosts at night with a man who was in love with you; but it was also, somehow, disquieting. There was not a sound as they stood at the turn of the stairs, with only half a dozen more steps to mount to the hall the haunted room opened from. Wray stopped, candle in hand. It was no ghost-hunting that had brought him up here at the dead of night. “Why didn’t you go on?” she whispered. He kissed her, almost savagely. “I don’t hear anything. I’m waiting for the music.”