Over the sea of excited faces Sir Marmaduke caught the wide-open, terrified eyes of Editha de Chavasse. She too, had heard. He beckoned to her across the room with a slight gesture of the hand, and she obeyed the silent call as quickly as she dared, working her way round to him, without arousing the attention of the crowd. "Do not lose your head," he whispered as soon as she was near him and seeing the wild terror expressed in every line of her face. "Slip into the next room ... and leave the door ajar.... Do this as quietly as may be ... now ... at once ... then wait there until I come." Again she obeyed him silently and swiftly, for she knew what that cry of "Halt!" meant, uttered at the door of her house. She had heard it, even as Sir Marmaduke had done, and after it the peremptory knocks, the loud call, the word of command, followed by the sound of an awed and supplicating voice, entering a feeble protest. She knew what all that meant, and she was afraid. As soon as Sir Marmaduke saw that she had done just as he had ordered, he deliberately joined the noisy groups which were congregated around Segrave and Lambert. He pushed his way forward and anon stood face to face with the young man on whom he had just wreaked such an irreparable wrong. Not a thought of compunction or remorse rose in his mind as he looked down at the handsome flushed face--quite calm and set outwardly in spite of the terrible agony raging within heart and mind. "Lambert!" he said gruffly, "listen to me.... Your conduct hath been most unseemly.... Mistress Endicott has for my sake, already shown you much kindness and forbearance ... Had she acted as she had the right to do, she would have had you kicked out of the house by her servants.... In your own interests now I should advise you to follow me quietly out of the house...." But this suggestion raised a hot protest on the part of all the spectators. "He shall not go!" declared Segrave violently. "Not without leaving behind him what he has deliberately stolen," commented Endicott, raising his oily voice above the din. Lambert had waited patiently, whilst his employer spoke. The last remnant of that original sense of deference and of gratitude caused him to hold himself in check lest he should strike that treacherous coward in the face. Sir Marmaduke's callousness in the face of his peril and unmerited disgrace, had struck Lambert with an overwhelming feeling of disappointment and loneliness. But his cruel insults now quashed despair and roused dormant indignation to fever pitch. One look at Sir Marmaduke's sneering face had told him not only that he could expect no help from the man who--by all the laws of honor--should have stood by him in his helplessness, but that he was the fount and source, the instigator of the terrible wrong and injustice which was about to land an innocent man in the veriest abyss of humiliation and irretrievable disgrace.