"John Burrill is dead. John Burrill has been murdered." In bewilderment, in amazement, she hears all there is to tell, all that the servants know. A messenger came, telling only the bare facts. John Burrill's body has been found in an old cellar; Frank has just gone, riding like a madman, to see that the body is cared for, and to bring it home. Mrs. Lamotte has been told the horrible news; has received it like an icicle; has ordered them to prepare the drawing room for the reception of the body, and has gone back to her daughter.
All this Constance hears, and then, strangely startled, and vaguely thankful that Frank is not in the house, she goes up to the sick room. Mrs. Lamotte rises to greet her, with a look upon her face that startles Constance, even more than did the news she has just heard below stairs.
Intense feeling has been for so long frozen out of that high-bred, haughty face, that the look of the eyes, the compression of the lips, the fear and horror of the entire countenance, amount almost to a transfiguration.
She draws Constance away from the bed, and into the dressing room beyond. Then, in a voice husky with suppressed emotion, she addresses her as follows:
"Constance Wardour, I am about to place my honor, my daughter's life, the honor of all my family, in your hands. There is not another living being in whom to trust, and I must trust some one. I must, for my child's sake, have relief, or my reason, too, will desert me. Constance, that sick room holds a terrible secret—Sybil's secret. If you can share it with me, for Sybil's sake, I will try to brave this tempest, as I have braved others; if you refuse"—she paused a moment, and then whispered fiercely:
"If you refuse, I will lock that chamber door, and Sybil Lamotte shall die in her delirium before I will allow an ear that I can not trust, within those walls, or the hand of a possible enemy to administer one life-saving draught."
