me."

Ray smiled, but he did not speak another word to me all the
breakfast-time. Once I made a remark to him, and his reply was curt,
almost rude. I left the room a few minutes afterwards, and came face to
face in the hall with Lady Angela.

"I am glad, Mr. Ducaine," she remarked, "that your early morning
labours have given you an appetite. You have been in to breakfast, have
you not?"

"Your father was good enough to insist upon it," I answered.

"You have seen him already this morning, then?"

"For a few minutes only," I explained. "I went up to his room."

"I trust so far that everything is going on satisfactorily?" she
inquired, raising her eyes to mine.

I did not answer her at once. I was engaged in marvelling at the
wonderful pallor of her cheeks.

"So far as I am concerned, I think so," I said. "Forgive me, Lady
Angela," I added, "but I think that you must have walked too far this
morning. You are very pale."

"I am tired," she admitted.

There was a lounge close at hand. She moved slowly towards it, and sat
down. There was no spoken invitation, but I understood that I was
permitted to remain with her.

"Do you know," she said, looking round to make sure that we were alone,
"I dread these meetings of the Council. I have always the feeling that
something terrible will happen. I knew Lord Ronald very well, and his
mother was one of my dearest friends. I am sure that he was perfectly
innocent. And to-day he is in a madhouse. They say that he will never
recover."

I did not wish to speak about these things, even with Lady Angela. I
tried to lead the conversation into other channels, but she absolutely
ignored my attempt.

"There is something about it all so grimly mysterious," she said. "It
seems almost as though there must be a traitor, if not in the Council
itself, in some special and privileged position."

She looked up at me as though asking for confirmation of her views. I
shook my head.

"Lady Angela," I said, "would you mind if I abstained from expressing
any opinion at all? It is a subject which I feel it is scarcely right
for me to discuss."

She looked at me with wide-open eyes, a dash of insolence mingled with
her surprise. I do not know what she was about to say, for at that
moment the young man with the sombre shooting suit and closely cropped
hair paused for a moment on his way out of the breakfast-room.
He glanced at me, and I received a brief impression of an
unwholesome-look