the morning sun were flooding her room with light. She
looked up at the clock; it was half-past six--too early for any of the
household to be already astir.

She certainly must have dropped asleep, quite unconsciously. The noise
of the footsteps, also of hushed subdued voices had awakened her--what
could they be?

Gently, on tip-toe, she crossed the room and opened the door to listen;
not a sound--that peculiar stillness of the early morning when sleep
with all mankind is at its heaviest. But the noise had made her nervous,
and when, suddenly, at her feet, on the very doorstep, she saw something
white lying there--a letter evidently--she hardly dared touch it. It
seemed so ghostlike. It certainly was not there when she came upstairs;
had Louise dropped it? or was some tantalising spook at play, showing
her fairy letters where none existed?

At last she stooped to pick it up, and, amazed, puzzled beyond measure,
she saw that the letter was addressed to herself in her husband's large,
businesslike-looking hand. What could he have to say to her, in the
middle of the night, which could not be put off until the morning?

She tore open the envelope and read:--

"A most unforeseen circumstance forces me to leave for the North
immediately, so I beg your ladyship's pardon if I do not avail myself of
the honour of bidding you good-bye. My business may keep me employed for
about a week, so I shall not have the privilege of being present at
your ladyship's water-party on Wednesday. I remain your ladyship's most
humble and most obedient servant, PERCY BLAKENEY."

Marguerite must suddenly have been imbued with her husband's slowness
of intellect, for she had perforce to read the few simple lines over and
over again, before she could fully grasp their meaning.

She stood on the landing, turning over and over in her hand this curt
and mysterious epistle, her mind a blank, her nerves strained with
agitation and a presentiment she could not very well have explained.

Sir Percy owned considerable property in the North, certainly, and he
had often before gone there alone and stayed away a week at a time; but
it seemed so very strange that circumstances should have arisen between
five and six o'clock in the morning that compelled him to start in this
extreme hurry.

Vainly she tried to shake off an unaccustomed feeling of nervousness:
she was trembling from head to foot. A wild, unconquerable desire
seized her to see her husband