ass him--like lightning--I speak not! No word escapes from my mouth! I
come direct to Madame's room! In entering, I know not what to say, I say
nothing! I dare not! I stand with the throat swelling, the heart
oppressed, but with the lips closed! I speak only because Madame
insists, she commands me to speak, to say all! I trust in God! I obey
Madame's command! I speak! I disclose frankly the painful truth! I
impart the boring information!"

While Louise was speaking Lady Dashwood's face had first expressed
astonishment, and then it relaxed into amusement, and when her maid
stopped speaking for want of breath, she sank down upon a chair and
burst into laughter.

"My poor Louise?" she said. "You never will understand English people.
If Mrs. Dashwood and the Warden are behind the window curtains, it is
because they want to look out of the window!"

Louise's face became passionately sceptical.

"In the rain, Madame!" she remarked. "In a darkness of the tomb?"

"Yes, in the rain and darkness," said Lady Dashwood. "You must go down
again in a moment, and give them my message!"

CHAPTER VII

MEN MARCHING PAST

After the Warden had closed the door on his sister he came back to the
fireplace. He had been interrupted, and he stood silently with his hand
on the back of the chair, just as he had stood before. He was waiting,
perhaps, for an invitation to speak; for some sign from Mrs. Dashwood
that now that they were alone together, she expected him to talk on,
freely.

She had no suspicion of the real reason why her Aunt Lena had gone away.
May took for granted that she had fled at the first sign of a religious
discussion. May knew that General Sir John Dashwood, like many well
regulated persons, was under the impression that he had, at some proper
moment in his juvenile existence now forgotten, at his mother's knee or
in his ancestral cradle, once and for all weighed, considered and
accepted the sacred truths containing the Christian religion, and that
therefore there was no need to poke about among them and distrust them.
Lady Dashwood had encouraged that sentiment of silent loyalty: it left
more time and energy over for the discussion and arrangement of the
practical affairs of life. May knew all this.

May, sitting by the fire, with her eyes on her work, observed the
hesitation in the Warden's mind. She knew that he was waiting. She
glanced up.

"What was it you were saying?" she asked in the softest of vo