There was a new freedom in his manner and Ellinor was prompt to feel it. She remembered as with a dim sense of nightmare those burning glances, unnoticed then, which had fixed her last night. What had she done to forfeit the respect even of this hitherto courteous and kindly gentleman? She stepped back as he approached and looked at him icily. “Whether you opened the gate or found it opened, I must repeat, Colonel Harcourt, that your presence here is a breach of courtesy—to your host and to me.” Smiling, Colonel Harcourt opened his mouth to speak. But Lady Lochore intervened. “How well you know my brother’s mind, Mrs. Marvel!” she jeered. “But you see, even men change their minds sometimes. Colonel Harcourt, show the lady with whose key you opened the gate.” “Sir David’s own key,” confirmed the colonel blandly, as he held it aloft. “We are not quite the trespassers you think.” “David gave it to you?” Her eyes were dark with trouble as she said the words, less as a question than as if she were setting forth her own grief. Harcourt did not answer for a moment. Then, slipping the key into his pocket with a laugh: “Gave?” he cried. “Gave is hardly the word. He abandoned it to me. People change their minds, as my lady says. Sir David may once have wished to keep this curious spot sacred to himself——” “And to Mistress Marvel, but now you may all eat the forbidden fruit!” cried Lady Lochore, with a glance first at the three men and then at Ellinor. “Sir David has at last found that it is not worth keeping to himself.” Herrick, quick to perceive that Ellinor was being baited yet unable to gather the clue to the purpose which seemed to underlie her tormentor’s words, now came forward. “But surely,” he urged, blushing ingenuously, “it is enough for us if Mrs. Marvel does not wish our presence.” Almost before Lady Lochore’s hard laugh had time to ring out, Ellinor answered: “Oh, no,” she said. The exceeding bitterness of her humiliation drew down the lips that tried to smile. “Pray, what can it be to me? I was only guardian. I am relieved of my trust.” She made a sort of little curtsey, half-ironic. And then moved away from them. But she was not destined to carry her bursting heart to solitude this morning.—Master Simon, his white hair fluttering, the tassel of his velvet cap swinging, the skirts of his dressing-gown flapping as he advanced with a high jerky step quite unlike his usual slow shuffling gait, emerged from the shade of the yew-tree, even as she stood on the threshold of the gate. One glance at his wildly-lighted eye and the flush on his cheek bones, sufficed to convince Ellinor of the cause of this extraordinary infraction of his rule of life. He was still under the influence of the last night’s drug; or, worse still perhaps, of some new one. He waved his arm at her and at the group beyond.