When he left them, they went to the door with him as they had been wont to do, the mother holding a shawl over her cap, the girls with their fair heads uncovered to the moon. They stood all together at the gate speaking cheerfully, and sending kind messages to Rachel as they bade him good-night--and none of the little group noticed a figure suddenly coming out of the darkness and gliding along past the paling of the garden. “What, boy, you here?” cried a voice suddenly behind Louis, which made him start aside, and they all shrank back a little to recognise in the moonlight the marble-white face of Lord Winterbourne. “What do you mean, sir, wandering about the country at this hour?” said the stranger--“what conspiracy goes on here, eh?--what are _you_ doing with a parcel of women? Home to your den, you skulking young vagabond--what are you doing here?” Marian, the least courageous of the three, moved by a sudden impulse, which was not courage but terror, laid her hand quickly upon Louis’s arm. The young man, who had turned his face defiant and furious towards the intruder, turned in an instant, grasping at the little timid hand as a man in danger might grasp at a shield invulnerable, “You perceive, my lord, I am beyond the reach either of your insults or your patronage here,” said the youth, whose blood was dancing in his veins, and who at that moment cared less than the merest stranger, who had never heard his name, for Lord Winterbourne. “Come, my lad, if you are imposing upon these poor people--I must set you right,” said the man who was called Louis’s father. “Do you know what he is, my good woman, that you harbour this idle young rascal in despite of my known wishes? Home, you young vagabond, home! This boy is----” “My lord, my lord,” interposed Mrs Atheling, in sudden agitation, “if any disgrace belongs to him, it is yours and not his that you should publish it. Go away, sir, from my door, where you once did harm enough, and don’t try to injure the poor boy--perhaps we know who he is better than you.”