"You?" in proud surprise. "Certainly not. I wish to be alone, Miss
Silver. Be good enough to go."
Sybilla's little brown fist clinched itself furiously, once on the landing outside.
"I can't humble her!" she thought. "I can't make her fear me. I can't triumph over her, do what I will. I have her secret and I hold her in my power, but she is prouder than Lucifer himself, and she would let me stand forth and tell all, and if one pleading word would stop me, she would not say it. 'The brave may die, but can not yield!' She should have been a man."
She went to the window and drew out her watch; it wanted a quarter of eight.
"In fifteen minutes my lady goes; in fifteen more I shall follow her, and not alone. I am afraid Sir Everard's slumbers will be rather disturbed to-night."
The last yellow gleam of the dying day was gone, and a sickly, pallid moon glimmered dully among drifts of scudding black clouds. An icy blast wailed up from the sea, and the rocking trees were like dryad specters in writhing agony. The distant Beech Walk looked black and grim and ghostly in the weird light.
A great clock high up in a windy turret struck eight. A moment after the door of my lady's dressing-room opened. A dark, shrouded figure emerged, flitted swiftly down the long gallery, down the stair-way, and vanished.
Ten minutes later Edwards, yawning forlornly, still in the entrance hall, beheld Miss Silver coming toward him with an anxious face, a large shawl thrown over her head.
"Going out again?" the valet exclaimed. "And such a nasty night, too.
You are fond of walking, Miss S., and no mistake."
"I'm not going for a walk," said Sybilla. "I am going to look for a locket I lost this afternoon. I was out in the park, in the direction of the Beech Walk, and there I must have dropped it."