He had for a moment believed that she intended to tell him this matter affecting his future that he knew must be delusion--some wonderful plan, as wonderful as impossible, such as a woman leading Aunt Maggie's retired life might have--whose delusion, having it before him, he could at last show her. But at her "Rollo," disappointed, he broke out, "Oh, what has old Rollo to do with it?" Her voice was making a stumbling effort to hold on at turning the key. But his "Old Rollo" caused her to halt, afraid, as one turning a key in very fact might halt and draw back at a footstep. He saw her face go grey with the hue of ashes. "Aunt Maggie!" he cried, and got up quickly and went to her. "I don't mean to be unkind. I must go. I cannot stay. But I'm not going angry--not running away. I love you--love you, you know how I love you. Just think of it as going on a visit. It's no more than that. I'm going with old Japhra--that's not like going, being with him, is it?" She just said: "When, dear?" "Darling, in the morning. At daybreak." IV She began to cry, and clung to him. But it was more than losing him had made that ashy hue in her face that had wrung his heart. It was realisation of a sudden thing that menaced her revenge--a thing suddenly arisen in its long, long path whose end she now was reaching. Thinking, when the hour came, the more dreadfully to strike Lady Burdon, she had deliberately made possible and had encouraged the friendship between Percival and Rollo. Had she gone too far? What when she told Percival and he saw it was "Old Rollo" he was to displace, "Old Rollo" upon whom he was to bring disaster--what if--? She dared not so much as finish that question. CHAPTER X WITH EGBERT IN FREEDOM I In the morning when he came early to her room, she was easier and able only to suffer her distress at losing him. Thoughts had come to her, helping her; and helping her the more in that they were of a part with the fatalism which had assured her at Audrey's death-bed that nothing could go wrong in her scheme. His resolve to go away was surely, she thought, fate's contribution to her success. Always she had planned for twenty-one--when he should be of age, and qualified himself to avenge his mother. Last night, in agony at losing him, she had nearly robbed herself of that. Fate, in guise of her panic realisation of his affection for Rollo, had interfered to stop her. Last night she had thought it insupportable to be left without him. While she lay sleepless--and heard her darling pacing his floor in the next room--fate had again encouraged her heart by showing her that this was well, not ill--that this was fate working for her; well that he should now, in the last period, be separated from Rollo.