"Oh," he answered cynically, "of what we shall have for lunch to-morrow. Good Heavens!" he exclaimed, and in the light cast down upon us by the blood-red canopy flickering in the sky above I could see his eyes shining strangely, "Have you no sense at all of grandeur? Can't you realise and appreciate the overpowering magnificence of all this? Have you no sentiment, romance or poetry at all in your conception? Don't you feel the hand of Providence? Doesn't this bring home to you the majesty of eternity better than any religion that has been tried or thought of? Really, Ashton, really..." I was amazed at his sudden outburst of pent-up feeling--I had imagined him cold, undemonstrative, unemotional, a being without nerves and devoid of temperament. So his self-control and apparent calmness had been nothing but a mask. I think I liked him all the better for it. We heard voices--women's shrill, terrified voices. We were unable to locate them. Suddenly I started. Surely that was Vera's voice! Yes, I recognised it. Attentively we both listened. Then, as the flames shot up again, lighting up the meadows away to the woods, we both distinctly saw in silhouette a man and a woman struggling in the distance. The man had her by the wrists. He was overpowering her. At that same moment the red glare sank, and both were hidden in the darkness. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. FOUND IN THE DEBRIS. We were on the alert in a moment. Though we searched in the darkness for a distance of a hundred yards or more, we failed to come upon either the man or the woman of whom we had caught a brief glimpse as they struggled desperately. Nor did we again hear the sound of voices. That I had heard Vera's voice, I felt convinced. We wondered if there was a lodge, and how far it was away. Perhaps the servants had taken shelter there. "The whole place seems to be deserted," Faulkner said when, after a futile search, we again found ourselves near the burning chateau, where the fire had by this time subsided considerably. "And yet there must have been people in the house--at any rate, servants." We walked right round the chateau. What a huge old place it had been! No wonder the fire had taken a long time to reach us, if it had broken out, as it presumably had done, in a wing remote from the room where we had been. Judging by the architecture of the outer walls I concluded that the chateau must have been built towards the end of the fourteenth century, and afterwards added to. There was a sharp nip in the air, and we felt chilly enough. Already the streaks of dawn were striving to pierce the belt of leaden clouds, against which the black pinewoods could be seen distinctly outlined. Faulkner turned to me. "Have you any money?" he asked. "Plenty," I answered. "Why?"