aint, inlaid box and took from it a shining
gold chain of rare workmanship and exquisite design, and this she hung
around my neck, nor would suffer me to thank her but laid her hand
gently on my lips.

"Now go," she said. "But ere you leave me, little Beatrice, grant me
but the one favour--it may be that I shall never ask another of you.
Your people, I know--those cold Montressors--care little for me, but
with all my faults, I have ever been kind to you. So, when the
morrow's come, and they tell you that Alicia is as one worse than
dead, think not of me with scorn only but grant me a little pity--for
I was not always what I am now, and might never have become so had a
little child like you been always anear me, to keep me pure and
innocent. And I would have you but the once lay your arms about my
neck and kiss me."

And I did so, wondering much at her manner--for it had in it a strange
tenderness and some sort of hopeless longing. Then she gently put me
from the room, and I sat musing by the hall window until night fell
darkly--and a fearsome night it was, of storm and blackness. And I
thought how well it was that my Uncle Hugh had not to return in such a
tempest. Yet, ere the thought had grown cold, the door opened and he
strode down the hall, his cloak drenched and wind-twisted, in one hand
a whip, as though he had but then sprung from his horse, in the other
what seemed like a crumpled letter.

Nor was the night blacker than his face, and he took no heed of me as
I ran after him, thinking selfishly of the sweetmeats he had promised
to bring me--but I thought no more of them when I got to the door of
the Red Room.

Alicia stood by the table, hooded and cloaked as for a journey, but
her hood had slipped back, and her face rose from it marble-white,
save where her wrathful eyes burned out, with dread and guilt and
hatred in their depths, while she had one arm raised as if to thrust
him back.

As for my uncle, he stood before her and I saw not his face, but his
voice was low and terrible, speaking words I understood not then,
though long afterwards I came to know their meaning.

And he cast foul scorn at her that she should have thought to fly with
her lover, and swore that naught should again thwart his vengeance,
with other threats, wild and dreadful enough.

Yet she said no word until he had done, and then she spoke, but what
she said I know not, save that it was full of hatred and defiance and
wild accusati