Now, all things prepared, she set herself to abide, with what patience she might, the weariful interval. But first she took off her betrothal ring, and looking at it remorsefully a moment, placed it gently with the letter on her dressing-table. Often during the long day she would caress her basil, and speak to it as if it were a sentient thing, and chide it for its too tardy blossoming. It was not keeping faith, she said; for surely now the longed-for hour of their union was approaching, and yet its stubborn little twigs remained tight-closed. All day she would hear, faint and afar, the low thunder of life returning to deserted rooms and echoing corridors; and, listening, was conscious of an already strange sense of detachment from the world of her knowledge. She could think of it tenderly, kindly, but without one emotion of regret for its loss. There had never been that in common between them which a first glimpse of the eternal truth of things could not dissipate; and truth had come to her, when it did, in a transcendent form. Her soul stood on tiptoe, foreseeing only the moment when love was to call it to the starry altitudes. Night, when it fell at last, came with a little moaning wind, which ever seemed to grow in fitful spasms as silence deep and deeper settled on the house. Listening, she seemed to hear without a sound of small voluble voices, and little footsteps running like pattering leaves, and giggling laughter that caught at her heart with fear. But it was nothing--only the mad spirits of the dark taking toll of the unrest which served to cover their antics. In the pauses of the wind they would all stop as still as mice; and then again, when the blast rose high, star its shrill volume with their bodiless cries. They were nothing; but to over-tense nerves the voices of nothingness are the sounds most ill to endure. And so poor Isabel found them--terrifying, inscrutable, until she could bear to be alone no longer. Better the company of the restless night itself than this vigil of haunted loneliness behind enshrouding curtains. As the great castle clock chimed eleven, she left her upper chambers, and stole down soft-footed to the fateful room whence she was to make her flight. She had only to wait and bide the moment--only to wait! But Fanchette had had her sure instructions, and what else was there for her herself to do? Only to wait. She extinguished the solitary light, and, putting aside the hangings, stood looking out into the darkness.