Sir Philip’s groom had, indeed, described to Margaret the scene outside the courthouse that afternoon, and the woman, totally ignorant of the interests at stake, had retailed the story to her mistress as she was brushing her hair for the night. “My father! My brother!” Lady Cranstoun murmured, with parched lips, as she staggered forward into the room. “What have you done with them?” Looking at her, he realized that it was impossible to deceive her longer. He pushed a chair toward her, but she impatiently declined it. “I am sorry to say,” he answered then, in those hard, level tones of his, “that your father and your brother plotted with you to disobey my orders. It is you who are to blame for the consequences.” “Where are they?” she cried, wildly. “Your father was mistaken for a poacher, and was accidentally shot in a scuffle----” “Murdered! Murdered by you!” she shrieked, wringing her hands as one distraught. “My father--my poor father!” Sir Philip laid his hand on the bell-rope. “For three years,” he said, coldly, “I have been trying to prove to you that it is worse than useless to try to disobey my orders. This unfortunate accident will, I hope, convince you of your folly. As to the other poaching gypsy, James Carewe, I did what I could to get him off, but he had savagely assaulted one of my keepers, and has got five years for it. In future you will know better than to attempt to hold any communication with your disreputable family.” She stared at him with distended eyes. “In future!” she repeated, in a low, altered voice. “What have you to do with my future?” Her tone was so singular that he looked into her face for the first time during this interview, and read there a burning hate, stronger and deeper than ever he was capable of cherishing. Without a word she turned from him, and left the room as the servant entered it in response to his master’s ring. That night, in a storm of wind and rain, an old woman and a lad of sixteen waited in the woods outside the Chase, with a horse stolen from Sir Philip’s stables, the bridle of which was held by Brian Carewe. And at one o’clock a figure, in the black cloak, bonnet, and long veil of a nurse, stole from the great oak doors, and over the slippery dead leaves that cumbered the steps, to join them. The old woman helped her on the horse and mounted it behind her, the lad held the bridle; and so by devious ways through the forest, known only to gypsies, Lady Cranstoun, of the Chase, left her husband’s home never to return. Rather more than a month later, while still the hue and cry over Lady Cranstoun’s disappearance, as it was rumored during an attack of delirium and fever, rang through the countryside, Dr. Ernest Netherbridge, reading a medical work before his study fire at midnight, was disturbed by a late caller.