Behind her was a peering group. Ellinor, in the first moment of strained fancy, saw a thousand lights, a thousand staring eyes, a sea of faces. The next instant the tide of blood began slowly to ebb from her brain. She felt herself strong, cold, indifferent. She knew she stood in night-garb before them all, she knew that the covered figure lay in full line of sight, in full light. She did not care. All her energies were concentrated in one fierce resolve: she would save the honour of this helpless man, no matter at what cost. So long as she had life and could stand before him, no one should lift that cloak to see who lay beneath it. She took her post and faced the intruders:—Lady Lochore, with harpy countenance, craning forward, greedy of vengeance; Mr. Villars, with goatish face, looking over her shoulder, greedy of scandal; Margery with stony eyes, holding the candelabra up aloft to shed more light upon her enemy’s shame; Mrs. Geary, staring with pallid orbs.... Ellinor clenched her arms over her heaving breast. But they who had expected so different a scene, and thought to find a panting young Romeo behind a curtain or a suave experienced Don Juan ready with explanations, a languorous Juliet or a distraught Elvira, halted almost with fear before the strange spectacle:—the prone figure, quite still, covered away, more sinister in its suggestion than even the sight of death; the menacing woman nobly robed from the spring of her full throat to the arch of her bare foot in heavy white folds, who, in her strength and purity, might have been a model for the vestal virgin guarding her sacred fire. Lady Lochore’s indictment froze unspoken upon her lips; her face became set as in a mask of terror; the hand flung out in gesture of vindictive reprobation, finger ready pointed in scorn, shook as with palsy. Her eye quailed from the stern beauty of Ellinor’s face and dropped to the dark mask on the floor; there, clear of the folds, lay a slender hand, helpless and relaxed, with the gleam of a well-known signet-ring upon the third finger. Her mouth dropped open, her terrified eyes almost started from their sockets. She flung a bewildered look around, and met full the accusing glare of Barnaby’s gaze fixed upon her from the shadow of the window curtain. Barnaby, monstrous figure, as if her crime itself had taken shape, to call for retribution! “Lady Lochore, what do you seek here? Have you not done evil enough already in this house!” Ellinor’s voice pierced with direct accusation to Lady Lochore’s soul. For a second the guilty woman fairly struggled for breath. Margery saved her from self-betrayal: “Her ladyship has surely seen enough!” Their eyes met. These words, too, were capable of a terrible undermeaning. But the housekeeper contrived to convey through her expressionless gaze a sense of support. If this woman knew the secret, she knew it as an accomplice; there was help in the thought.