Drawing aside the curtain, she saw that the night was bright and starlit. She preferred the air out in the park to the sounds of gaiety within that house which was no longer to be her home. Therefore she slipped on a skirt and blouse, and, throwing her golf-cape across her shoulders and a shawl over her head, she crept past the room wherein Elise was packing her belongings, and down the back-stairs to the lawn. The sound of the laughter of the men and women of the shooting-party aroused a poignant bitterness within her. As she passed across the drive she saw a light in the library, where, no doubt, her father was sitting in his loneliness, feeling and examining his collection of seal-impressions. She turned, and, walking straight on, struck the gravelled path which took her to the castle ruins. Not until the black, ponderous walls rose before her did she awaken to a consciousness of her whereabouts. Then, entering the ruined courtyard, she halted and listened. All was dark. Above, the stars twinkled brightly, and in the ivy the night-birds stirred the leaves. Holding her breath, she strained her ears. Yes, she was not deceived! There were sounds distinct and undeniable. She was fascinated, listening again to those shadow-voices that were always precursory of death--the fatal Whispers. CHAPTER XXII BY THE MEDITERRANEAN It was February--not the foggy, muddy February of dear, damp Old England, but winter beside the bright blue Mediterranean, the winter of the Côte d'Azur. At the Villa Heyburn--that big, square, white house with the green sun-shutters, surrounded by its great garden full of spreading palms, sweet-smelling mimosa, orange-trees laden with golden fruit, and bright geraniums, up on the Berigo at San Remo--Lady Heyburn had that afternoon given a big luncheon-party. The smartest people wintering in that most sheltered nook of the Italian Riviera had eaten and gossiped and flirted, and gone back to their villas and hotels. Dull persons found no place in Lady Heyburn's circle. Most of the people were those she knew in London or in Paris, including a sprinkling of cosmopolitans, a Russian prince notorious for his losses over at the new _cercle_ at Cannes, a divorced Austrian Archduchess, and two or three well-known diplomats. "Dear old Henry" remained, of course, at Glencardine, as he always did. Lady Heyburn looked upon her winter visit to that beautiful villa overlooking the calm sapphire sea as her annual emancipation. Henry was a dear old fellow, she openly confided to her friends, but his affliction made him terribly trying.