"Oh, bless you!" he exclaimed. "Bless you, Lady Letitia, for speaking to me as though I were a human being. Now I am going to steal out of that door on tiptoe." "Wait till I have listened there," she whispered. She stole past him and stooped down with her ear to the keyhole. She frowned for a moment and held out her hand warningly. It seemed to him that he could feel his heart beating. Close to where he was standing, her silk stockings were hanging over the back of a chair.--He suddenly closed his eyes, covered them desperately with the palms of his hand. Her warning finger was still extended. "That was some one passing," she said. "I don't understand why. They all came to bed some time ago. Stay where you are and don't move." They both listened. David seemed in those few minutes to have lost all the composure which had become the habit of years. His heart was beating madly. He was shaking as though with intense cold. Lady Letitia, on the other hand, seemed almost unruffled. Only he fancied that at the back of her eyes there was something to which as yet she had given no expression, something which terrified him. Then, as they stood there, neither of them daring to move, there came a sudden awful sound. It had seemed to him that the world could hold no greater horror than he was already suffering, but the sound to which they listened was paralysing, hideous, stupefying. With hoarse, brazen note, rusty and wheezy, yet pulled as though with some desperate clutch, the great alarm bell which hung over the courtyard was tolling its dreadful summons. Letitia stood up, her cheeks ghastly pale. She, too, was struggling now for composure. "Really," she exclaimed, "this is an evening full of incidents.--Don't touch me," she added. "I shall be all right directly." For a single moment he knew that she had nearly fainted. She caught at the side of the wall. Then they heard a cry from outside. A spark flew past the window. A hoarse voice from somewhere below shouted "Fire!" And then something more alarming still. All down the corridor, doors were thrown open. There was the sound of eager voices--finally a loud knocking at the door which they were guarding. Letitia shrugged her shoulders. "This," she murmured, "is fate." She opened the door. There was a little confused group outside. The Marquis, fully dressed, stood with his eyes fixed upon Thain at first in blank astonishment,--afterwards as one who looks upon some horrible thing. Grantham in a dressing gown, took a quick step forward. "My God, it's Thain!" he exclaimed. "What in hell's name--?" Letitia turned towards her father. "Father," she began--