"Excuse me if I leave you," she said, at last, desperately.
"I may return, if I overcome this faintness."
She had just sufficient strength to slip through the outer door, of the cloister into the cool hall, and to make her way to a balcony, where night breezes swept crisply over her, and the upper edge of the round, red moon smote her face with the glow of one of Raphael's angels.
There she stood, gazing down upon the dark trees, her heart a chaos of troubled reverie.
"On the first of September, at the battle of Chantilly, it is feared."
Voices of men in eager colloquy; two figures lounging on the terrace steps beneath.
"Where did you see it?"
"In the last War Gazette—Colonel Brand's company almost cut to pieces, and the colonel killed.
"Poor fellow! Do they know it here?"
Margaret turned and walked with a steady step to her own room, stabbed through the heart with this sudden dagger.