y of--O Christ! Christ! I cannot bear it!"

He dropped suddenly on to his knees by the table and hid his face.

III

At Babington House Marjorie slept, as was often the custom, in the same
room with her maid--a large, low room, hung all round with painted
cloths above the low wainscoting.

On the night after the visit to the prison, Janet noticed that her
mistress was restless; and that while she would say nothing of what was
troubling her, and only bade her go to bed and to sleep, she herself
would not go to bed. At last, in sheer weariness, the maid slept.

She awakened later, at what time she did not know, and, in her
uneasiness, sat up and looked about her; and there, still before the
crucifix, where she had seen her before she slept, kneeled her mistress.
She cried out in a loud whisper:

"Come to bed, mistress; come to bed."

And, at the word, Marjorie started; then she rose, turned, and in the
twilight of the summer night began to prepare herself for bed, without
speaking. Far away across the roofs of Derby came the crowing of a cock
to greet the dawn.

CHAPTER X

I

It was a fortnight later that there came suddenly to Babington House old
Mr. Biddell himself. Up to the present he had been careful not to do so.
He appeared in the great hall an hour before dinner-time, as the tables
were being set, and sent a servant for Mistress Manners.

"Hark you!" he said; "you need not rouse the whole house. It is with
Mistress Manners alone that my business lies."

He broke off, as Mrs. FitzHerbert looked over the gallery.

"Mr. Biddell!" she cried.

He shook his head, but he seemed to speak with some difficulty.

"It is just a rumour," he said, "such as there hath been before. I beg
you--"

"That ... there will be no trial at all?"

"It is just a rumour," he repeated. "I did not even come to trouble you
with it. It is with Mistress Manners that--"

"I am coming down," cried Mrs. Thomas, and vanished from the gallery.

Mr. Biddell acted with decision. He whisked out again into the passage
from the court, and there ran straight into Marjorie, who was coming in
from the little enclosed garden at the back of the house.

"Quick!" he said. "Quick! Mrs. Thomas is coming, and I do not wish--"

She led the way without a word back into the court, along a few steps,
and up again to the house into a little back parlour that the steward
used when the house was full. It was unoccupied now, and looked ou