He started up with some wild idea of following them, but by now they would be miles on the road; he did not doubt that one day he would kill Tom Wharton; but to-night it was madness; he was deserted and alone, still he had himself at least in hand to face whatever came. Yet the next instant his impulse was to ride after them at any cost, at any price. She might have waited! A dull agony came over him, he dropped his head on his outspread arms and the dark glimmered with horror. The curse! To the last shame and misery it was being meted out—an accursed race—accursed. The word beat in his brain like a drum to execution. Accursed, abhorred; great and famous as he had been but yesterday, there was not one who would stay to help him meet this moment now. He was used to standing alone; he had an immeasurable courage, yet his wife’s defection had robbed him of half his strength. Let her only have waited a little longer—possibly a few poor hours longer and she might have been free indeed. He rose up blindly and felt for his sword. It was completely dark, only the long window glimmered ghostly at the other end of the room. As he moved he knocked a table over and there was a crash of china as the vases struck the floor, he paused, leaning against the wall with his hand to his sick head. The room opened into the drawing-room by folding-doors; it seemed, as if, in that other chamber, some one was moving, some one roused by the falling table. Suddenly a candle appeared like a star in the distance, coming nearer through the dark. His blood leaped for a moment; it might be that she had not gone—it might be that she had returned. “Ulrica!” he cried hoarsely, “Ulrica!” But now the candle cast a glow on the person carrying it; a woman, but too tall and stately for Lady Stair. She came to the open doors and stopped; her light gray dress appeared luminous against the darkness, and a black hood was pushed back from her pale, set face. She held the candle in a hand so trembling that the flame wavered and the wax dripped over her dress. “Is it you, Lord Stair?” she said faintly. “Is it you?” In an instant he knew her; in an instant it was all plain to him, as the key to the cipher she explained everything; his secret enemy, the one who had worked his ruin in the dark—he heard her words of three years ago as if she spoke them now. “If you push me too far I may pull your fortunes about your feet.” He moved into the center of the room. “Delia,” he said, “Delia.” She shrank back. “Do you know me, Lord Stair?” “I know you—and—now, what you have done.” The candle only faintly dispelled the thunderous summer dark; crossing the threshold she stood it on the chimneypiece, where its double shone from the mirror, a dim ghost. Lord Stair’s figure showed obscurely with a trailing black shadow behind it. “Why have you come?” he said in a low voice.