The light was gone; the panelled wall was dark again. Lavendale snatched the poker, and stirred the logs into a blaze. There was nothing, nothing save that wildly-beating heart of his, to tell him there had been something there.
Next moment the door was flung open suddenly, and a bevy of his guests rushed into the room. A wild disorderly mob, as ribald a set as the crew in Comus, it seemed to him, after that unearthly presence which had that instant been there.
"What have you been doing, Lavendale?" asked Durnford. "Is this the way you treat your guests?"
"The ladies were out of humour at having to take their tea without your lordship," said Irene.
"And if it had not been for the most exquisite game at hide and seek, we should have all had the vapours," protested Lady Polwhele; "but we have had mighty fun in your corridors and closets, Lavendale, and I think we must have routed all your family ghosts, and given a good scare to your antique Jacobite rats. Of course you have no parvenu Hanoverians behind your respectable wainscots? We have not left a corner unexplored in our revelry."
"It was a scurvy trick in your lordship to desert us so long," said Mrs. Asterley, "and I would have you look after Lady Judith, who is flirting with Lord Bolingbroke in the saloon."
"O, his French wife will take care there is no mischief done," said Asterley; "but indeed, Lavendale, you must join us at basset. We can have no fun without you."
"I am coming," said Lavendale, following them out into the hall.
Durnford looked at him uneasily when they came into the light.
"What were you doing, Jack, in that dark room?" he asked. "Had you fallen asleep?"