"Meanwhile," went on Miss Cheyne, as if to change the subject to other things, "you had better get upstairs and unpack your boxes. Don't expect Aggie to help you, she has enough to do downstairs."
"Oh, I don't want Aggie's help," responded Lady Margaret quickly with a wry little smile. "She wasn't exactly charming, and I must say I don't quite like the look of her. Can't you get rid of her, Aunt? I'm sure she is not honest, and that man, too. If we are going to have the Cheyne jewels here——"
"We are," snapped Miss Cheyne, "and don't you trouble your head about what doesn't concern you, my dear. You leave John and Aggie alone. I'll settle them."
Lady Margaret said no more but ascended to her room, thinking in her innermost heart of many things. She could only dimly remember her aunt when she had been allowed to spend her holidays at Cheyne Court, but she knew she was eccentric, and because she herself had been jilted in her youth hated all men.
Still she did not mean to be made a prisoner of. She was determined to visit not only Miss Lorne, to whom she had been undeniably attracted, but also, and this she considered far more important, Lady Brenton, the mother of the man she had pledged herself to marry in those stolen interviews under the walls of Notre Dame.
Thanks to Miss Cheyne's many requests, Lady Margaret had little time to pay visits or write letters that day, and when night did fall, she was glad to crawl into bed and sleep the sleep of youth and healthy fatigue.
She slept soundly for hours, but all at once she was rudely awakened. From the depths below that supposedly sleeping household came a queer bumping noise, and it seemed to the terrified girl, as she sat up in bed, that the very house was being torn to pieces.
Conquering her natural fears she rose, and donning a dressing gown, unconsciously tried the handle of her door.
To her amazement it was locked on the outside, locked! She was a prisoner in her own house!