Again she sighed, and her eyes closed. I gave her more brandy. She took it, choked, raised herself against my shoulder.
“I’m all right now,” she said faintly. “It served me right. How silly it all is!” Then she began to laugh, and then she began to cry.
It was at this moment that we heard voices on the terrace below. She clutched at my arm in a frenzy of terror, the bright tears glistening on her cheeks.
“Oh! not any more, not any more,” she cried. “I can’t bear it.”
“Hush,” I said, taking her hands strongly in mine. “I’ve played the fool; so have you. We must play the man now. The people in the village have seen the lights—that’s all. They think we’re burglars. They can’t get in. Keep quiet, and they’ll go away.”
But when they did go away they left the local constable on guard. He kept guard like a man till daylight began to creep over the hill, and then he crawled into the hayloft and fell asleep, small blame to him.
But through those long hours I sat beside her and held her hand. At first she clung to me as a frightened child clings, and her tears were the prettiest, saddest things to see. As we grew calmer we talked.
“I did it to frighten my cousin,” I owned. “I meant to have told you to-day, I mean yesterday, only you went away. I am Lawrence Sefton, and the place is to go either to me or to my cousin Selwyn. And I wanted to frighten him off it. But you, why did you——?”
Even then I couldn’t see. She looked at me.
“I don’t know how I ever could have thought I was brave enough to do it, but I did want the house so, and I wanted to frighten you——”