"Ah!" murmured Macandrew complacently, "so Geary did not deliver my message to you after all."
"Geary!" The Major stood erect, braced for the coming struggle, and his face hardened. "Did Geary know this----" And he pointed to Mavis.
"I told him the truth last night."
"And he never told me; he never warned me." Rebb clenched his fists. "Oh the scoundrel! I might have---- But there, it is too late--too late."
"What do you mean by too late?" said Mrs. Berch imperiously, and throwing a protecting arm round her daughter, "fight for Madge if you will not for yourself."
But Rebb paid no attention to her. "Geary! Geary!" he muttered, looking round with bloodshot eyes, "he was in the courtyard an hour ago, and he did not tell me, curse him! He may be---- Geary! Geary!" he raised his voice to an angry cry and ran swiftly along the terrace through the arch and into the quadrangle.
Gerald took the hand of his wife and followed quickly, with Tod and the ex-tutor behind. They did not wish to lose sight of Rebb. For one moment Mrs. Berch and her daughter looked at one another, and Madge hung back, trembling. But the mother suddenly seized the widow's wrist and dragged her, a miserable figure, pale-faced, and shaking in her gay attire, into the quadrangle. "We must see what Michael will do," whispered Mrs. Berch, passing her tongue over her dry lips. "He may win the day yet."
"No, no," moaned Mrs. Crosbie; "he is lost."
At the far end of the quadrangle Gerald and Mavis saw the token of Geary's drunken handiwork. A considerable portion of the ivy-clothed wall had fallen outward, and lay in ruins on the lip of the cliff. Three or four trees had been dashed into the pool below, and there was a clear view across the Ruddle to the green forest beyond. The mystery of the Enchanted Castle was at an end, and, no longer a palace of the Sleeping Beauty, it lay open to the world, as Morgan had said. And now in its romantic quadrangle there were sterner doings than the moonlight wooings of lovers who had, for the moment, recalled the Golden Age, when the gods came down to men.
"Geary! Geary!" shouted Rebb, rushing towards the fallen wall, and mounting its ruins. There was no response, and Gerald fancied that Rebb had merely made an excuse, so as to get near the river and throw himself in. But, guilty or innocent, the Major was sufficiently brave to face the sins he had committed, and came down again slowly to the group near the battered sundial. He was still livid, but more self-controlled.