o her feet, more cool
and more collected. She took up Walter's portrait, and, kissing it, put
it away carefully in a drawer. Some of her little treasures she gathered
together and placed with it, preparatory to departure, for she would on
the morrow leave Glencardine perhaps for ever.

The stable-clock had struck ten. To where she stood came the strident
sounds of the mechanical piano-player, for some of the gay party were
waltzing in the hall. Their merry shouts and laughter were discordant to
her ears. What cared any of those friends of her step-mother if she were
in disgrace and an outcast?

Drawing aside the curtain, she saw that the night was bright and
starlit. She preferred the air out in the park to the sounds of gaiety
within that house which was no longer to be her home. Therefore she
slipped on a skirt and blouse, and, throwing her golf-cape across her
shoulders and a shawl over her head, she crept past the room wherein
Elise was packing her belongings, and down the back-stairs to the lawn.

The sound of the laughter of the men and women of the shooting-party
aroused a poignant bitterness within her. As she passed across the drive
she saw a light in the library, where, no doubt, her father was sitting
in his loneliness, feeling and examining his collection of
seal-impressions.

She turned, and, walking straight on, struck the gravelled path which
took her to the castle ruins.

Not until the black, ponderous walls rose before her did she awaken to a
consciousness of her whereabouts. Then, entering the ruined courtyard,
she halted and listened. All was dark. Above, the stars twinkled
brightly, and in the ivy the night-birds stirred the leaves. Holding her
breath, she strained her ears. Yes, she was not deceived! There were
sounds distinct and undeniable. She was fascinated, listening again to
those shadow-voices that were always precursory of death--the fatal
Whispers.

CHAPTER XXII

BY THE MEDITERRANEAN

It was February--not the foggy, muddy February of dear, damp Old
England, but winter beside the bright blue Mediterranean, the winter of
the Cote d'Azur.

At the Villa Heyburn--that big, square, white house with the green
sun-shutters, surrounded by its great garden full of spreading palms,
sweet-smelling mimosa, orange-trees laden with golden fruit, and bright
geraniums, up on the Berigo at San Remo--Lady Heyburn had that afternoon
given a big luncheon-party. The smartest people wintering in t