They ran. But Eliza had the start of them. Also when she ran on the grass they could not hear her footsteps and had to wait for the sound of leather on far-away gravel. Also she was driven by fear, and fear drives fast.
She went, it seemed, the nearest way, invisibly through the waxing moonlight, seeing she only knew what amid the glades and groves.
"I'll stop here; see you tomorrow," gasped Mabel, as the loud pursuers followed Eliza's clatter across the terrace. "She's gone through the stable yard."
"The back way," Gerald panted as they turned the corner of their own street, and he and Jimmy swung in past the water-butt.
An unseen but agitated presence seemed to be fumbling with the locked back-door. The church clock struck the half-hour.
"Half-past nine," Gerald had just breath to say. "Pull at the ring.
Perhaps it'll come off now."
He spoke to the bare doorstep. But it was Eliza, dishevelled, breathless, her hair coming down, her collar crooked, her dress twisted and disordered, who suddenly held out a hand a hand that they could see; and in the hand, plainly visible in the moonlight, the dark circle of the magic ring.
"Alf a mo!" said Eliza's gentleman friend next morning. He was waiting for her when she opened the door with pail and hearthstone in her hand. "Sorry you couldn't come out yesterday."
"So'm I." Eliza swept the wet flannel along the top step. "What did you do?"
"I 'ad a bit of a headache," said the gentleman friend. "I laid down most of the afternoon. What were you up to?"