"What am I to do?" she asked, as if in great distress. "Miss Lorton, you see my predicament; please come to my aid, and help me to escape. Tell Lord Angleford that you do not wish me to say any more." Still looking straight before her, Nell responded, almost inaudibly: "Speak! Yes--tell them!" Lady Luce still seemed reluctant; at last she said, with an embarrassed laugh: "After all, it may amount to nothing, and you'll be very much disappointed. Indeed, it is very likely not true." Her reluctance was not altogether feigned, for it needed even her audacity and assurance to make such an accusation as she was about to bring against the future Countess of Angleford, and under her future roof; but she braced herself to a supreme effort, and, though she was really as white as Nell, she looked round boldly, as if confident of the truth of the thing she was going to say. "Everybody knows what Sir Archie is," she began. "He's the worst flirt and the most dangerous man in England. Everybody has heard stories of his delinquencies; some of them are true, but many of them, I dare say, are false, and I've not the least doubt that Miss Lorton will tell us that the story that she was about to elope with him from Wolfer House one morning, but that she was stopped by Lord Wolfer, is an absurd fable. The story goes that she did not know, until Lord Wolfer told her at the very moment that she and Sir Archie were leaving the house, that Sir Archie was a married man. Now that's the whole affair, and I really think Miss Lorton will be grateful to me for giving her an opportunity of rising in true dramatic fashion and exclaiming: 'It is not true!'" She nodded at Nell and laughed softly. There were many who echoed her laugh, for, indeed, the story did sound like an absurd fable. All eyes were turned on Nell, and all waited for her to bring about with a denial the satisfactory denouement. Drake did not laugh, for his heart was burning with fury against the audacity, the shameless insolence, of Lady Luce; but he smiled in a grim fashion as his eyes still rested on Nell's face. A moment passed. Why did she not rise? Why did she not, at any rate, speak? Four words would be enough: "It is not true!" But she remained motionless and silent. A kind of consternation began to creep over those who were watching, Drake went up to her and laid his hand on her shoulder. "Pray relieve Lady Luce's anxiety, Nell, and tell her that she has amused us with a canard too ridiculous to be anything but false," he said tenderly. She looked up at him, her brows drawn, her eyes pitiful in their agony of appeal, her lips quivering. "It is true!" she said, in a voice which, though low, was perfectly audible.