"Yes," she said, very low, "I was horribly frightened." I felt the shuddering that ran along her wrist, and the chill of that old fear of hers crept into my blood, too. She looked through me, as though I were vapour, as though the bodyless Dread her eyes were fixed on once again for that instant—as though that were the most real presence in the room.
"Tell me," I whispered, "tell me what it was."
"——impossible to talk about such things." She drew away her hand. "All you need to know is ... the need of taking care. Of never running risks. What time is it?"
"Five minutes past eleven."
"Did Lady Helmstone say she and Hermione would walk back with Bettina?"
"No, she didn't say that."
"What did she say?"
"Just that she would send Betty home."
After some time she said quite suddenly: "That might mean alone in the motor."
I was going to say "Why not?" But as I looked up from my work at the face under the candle light, a most foolish and indefinable fear flashed across my mind—a feeling too ridiculous to own—sudden, indefinable dread of that inoffensive man, the Helmstones' head chauffeur. I had no sooner cast out the childish thought than I remembered the two under men. One only a sort of motor-house "odd man." To that hangdog creature might fall the task of driving Betty home! I had thought of this man vaguely enough before, yet with some dash of human sympathy, for it was common talk that he was "put upon" by the other men. He was a weakling, and unhappy; now I suddenly felt him to be evil—desperate.