She waved her shrivelled hand in token of parting benediction, and slunk away among the trees with a swiftness astonishing in a woman of her years, leaving Stella, with her brain filled by bewildering questions and ideas, to make the best of her way to the house. The first dinner-bell had already rung as she entered her room to dress for dinner. The lady’s maid, who attended both upon her and Lady Cranstoun, was full of comments upon her moist dress and boots. “Dear me, miss! how wet your things are! And you seem all flushed as though you had hurried. I do hope you won’t have taken a chill.” Stella disliked the girl--a tall, shifty-eyed creature, with a retreating chin and a tendency to gossip, who had only been in Sir Philip’s service a short time. “Don’t waste time in remarks, Ellen,” she said, quietly, “but help me into my white silk dress.” Fortunately, she was able to enter the dining-room at a quarter past seven, on the last stroke of the gong, but by the peculiarly cold and evil gleam of Sir Philip’s eyes as they rested upon her she knew that he was already greatly angered against her. This she attributed to the fact of their conversation in the shrubbery that morning; but what she did not guess at was a certain short interview which had taken place between her father and the housemaid Dakin a few minutes before dinner, while Lady Cranstoun and Lord Carthew were still dressing for that meal. Dakin knew that Sir Philip, who carried punctuality to an excess extremely uncomfortable for other people, would be in his study long before dinner; she therefore tapped at the door discreetly, and on being admitted, stated that she had “something to say which she thought Sir Philip might like to hear.” She was a plain, sallow-faced woman of forty, with a slight cast in her dark eyes, and extremely quiet in dress and manner, and she stood, rolling a little corner of her snowy muslin apron over and over in her fingers while she spoke. “It was before lunch, sir,” she said, in a low, apologetic voice. “I was passing along the corridor, when, as I was walking by the rooms of the young gentleman that was wounded, and that first of all called himself Lord Carthew, what did I see by accident, but----” “Spare me all this circumlocution, Mrs. Dakin. You were spying, as I pay you to do, and you saw--what?” “Only Miss Stella, sir, hugging and kissing the young gentleman,” returned Dakin, with humble vindictiveness. “The young gentleman! What young gentleman?” “Mr. Pritchard, sir, that got his arm shot. You didn’t see him, I think. He was very big and very handsome, and he was calling Miss Stella his dear and his darling, which, begging your pardon, sir, she seemed quite to like and encourage him.” Sir Philip muttered an oath under his breath, and stamped his heel on the carpet. “When did this happen?” he asked sharply. “Before or after her ride?”