Having tied back her hair, she flung a dark travelling cloak around her, the hood of which she could draw over her head were she so minded. Then she quitted her room and went lightly downstairs. Early hours were the rule at Loudwater House, and everybody had retired long ago. There were two exits from the house into the garden, one through the conservatory, the other by means of a glass door at the end of a side corridor. Fanny chose the latter. Having, with as little noise as possible, unlocked the door, she opened it and stepped out into the still moonlit night. Making her way into the farther walks, she began to pace them slowly to and fro. Not a light shone anywhere in such windows of the house as were visible from the garden. The quietude was intense, but presently the silence was broken by the chiming of the quarter before twelve. The moonlight seemed to listen, and as the sound died away a low sigh breathed over the garden, and therewith half-opened leaves and bursting buds began to stir and whisper. They had awoke to the first kisses of the soft cool airs which had come as the avant-couriers of midnight. Suddenly Fanny became as rigid as a statue. Her quick ears had caught a faint sound, as it might be of the crunching of gravel beneath someone's footsteps. Scarcely breathing, she listened. Yes, there it was again, nearer than before. Evidently someone was approaching in the direction where she was. Her first impulse was to hide herself. In a little trepidation she glanced around. Ah! there, close by her, was the well-house, as it was called. It was the one sheltered spot in the garden. A few swift noiseless strides and her form was lost among its shadows. The old well was said to be coeval with the building of Loudwater House, to the inmates of which it had been the sole source of water supply for several generations. Of late years, however, that is to say, since the establishment of the Merehampton waterworks, it had fallen into the desuetude and neglect which become the portion of all things which outlast their uses. Nowadays its water was used for two purposes only. One was to supply the dowager Mrs. Melray's tea-kettle (there was no water anywhere, in that lady's opinion, equal to that of the old well for expressing the hidden virtues of Souchong or Bohea). The other purpose to which it was put was the irrigation of the garden. The well itself was covered in by a conical overhanging red-tiled roof, supported by thick oaken beams, with other beams inside, forming, with the windlass-rope and bucket, the needful apparatus for bringing the water to the surface. Even on a moonlight night like the present it was a home of dense shadow.