Lord Stair glanced round.
“Your work, mistress, your work,” he wrenched himself free of her. “Go without there yonder and laugh at it.”
She was crying and sobbing like a mad woman.
“What have I done—I have been crazy—crazy—”
With fallen hair and the red light over her from head to foot, she ran to the door; he followed. The door was burning, the oak stair threatened; flames were already showing in the hall.
Delia wrung her hands, shrieking and moaning to herself, calling on the living and the dead in her distraction; she ran a little way down the wide stairs, then at sight of the flaming door fell back with a scream.
“Ye should not have come,” said Lord Stair.
“Your place is with those who lit the fire.”
Her wild eyes lifted to his figure.
“Do you think I am afraid for myself?” she cried. She came back to him with outstretched hands and thrown back head; as she stood there, poised above the smoking hallway with the flickering light and shade across her distorted face, she seemed as unearthly, as terribly strange as her surroundings.