“Oh, yes, my lady. Not that that’s anything new either. She used to be half the night with him sometimes. But that was before your ladyship came. She stopped going this last month. But last night—eh, my lady, they did talk! I could hear the sound of their voices—she has great power with Sir David—has Mrs. Marvel.” Lady Lochore sat down again. Her fingers closed on the muslin of the dressing-table. Helplessly and hopelessly her haggard eyes looked forth into a black prospective. Oh, she had failed—failed! “’Tis indeed a sad day for Bindon,” said Margery after a pause, as if in answer to Lady Lochore. “No wonder your ladyship is anxious. There are times when I do think we’ll have some dreadful catastrophe here. If it’s nothing worse there’ll be an accident with them drugs, as sure as fate. Master Rickart will be poisoning some of the poor folk again, or himself, maybe, or, indeed, it might be Mrs. Marvel, she that’s always in with him.” Lady Lochore started ever so slightly and turned round sharply. Never had Margery looked more benevolent, more virtuous. “Yes, that’s what I do be saying to myself,” pursued the housekeeper. “Somebody will be found dead, and nobody to fix the blame on, with the way things are going on.” (The pupils of Lady Lochore’s eyes narrowed like a hawk’s.) “And when I see Mrs. Marvel going about, so young and fresh and strong, and sure of herself:—‘Maybe it will be you,’ thinks I.” “Oh, get away with you!” cried Lady Lochore, and buried her head on her hands with a frenzied gesture. “Shall we go and look through the bars into the little paradise of poisons?” When Colonel Harcourt had suddenly made this suggestion to his friends, as they lay, in somewhat discontented mood, under the shade of the spreading cedar tree this oppressive summer day, he had cast a meaning glance towards Lady Lochore and she had risen with alacrity. “Excellent!” she cried, when at the forbidden gate Harcourt produced the key with a flourish. She knew of David’s difference with the colonel on the previous day; and though it had sunk into insignificance before the news of Ellinor’s return to the tower, she was now as the drowning creature that clutches at straws-Colonel Harcourt was a noted shot. And she clapped her hands when the gate rolled back on its hinges. She had no need to be told that the dangerous Mrs. Marvel was busy among the herbs within. Herrick, moodily striding beside the Dishonourable Caroline, gave but the most perfunctory ear to a discourse upon the inductions to be drawn from a partner’s first play of trumps—with especial reference to certain crimes of his own committed the previous night. He started as he saw Harcourt’s action. “No—no!” he exclaimed. “I understand that this would be an indiscretion.” “You will perhaps allow me,” said Harcourt blandly, “to make use of a key delivered over by no less a person than our host himself.”