"Captain Brand must come instantly," cried Margaret, and turned sharply upon the quailing ambassador. "Do you hear, sir?"
She paused with a lady's instinct—a lady's aversion to address an unknown man.
"Roland Mortlake, Miss Walsingham," murmured the stranger coming out of his fog.
"Go tell Captain Brand that Mrs. Brand is dying—that she has but a few minutes to live, and that he must come instantly if he would hear her last words. You will remember, Mr. Mortlake? And say the will must be changed, or Captain Brand will be ruined. Tell him that. Now go, for Heaven's sake!"
The stranger turned his wrapt scrutiny of herself into a keen and crafty attention of her words. He repeated them after her, with a significant pause after each clause, as if he longed to wrest the uttermost moiety of a meaning from her scant expressions.
"Symonds shall accompany you with the carriage, and bring Captain Brand," said Margaret. "Send him, Purcell."
The steward trotted away to dispatch the coachman, and the pair were left with each other.
The man on the lowest step and the woman on the highest gazed fixedly in each other's faces. His fierce, envious, and inquisitive; hers cold, distrustful, and unflinching.
In that silent interview their souls stood forth, each revealing to the other, and doomed to future recognition under the most perfect masking which rascality could assume to compass its end, or purity devise to hide from peril.
Then Roland Mortlake bowed to the earth, and, striding back to his horse and his companion, uttered a terrible execration.