"I shall take her away presently, her lover and deliverer. In this case it is the best method."
"And let her curse me?"
"No. I shall promise to deliver you and bring about your redemption."
"A devilish method," said Sir John.
"One must work with the tools that are to hand," said Rosmore with a shrug of his shoulders.
"But when? When?"
"Perhaps in a few short hours. Wait! Wait, Sir John. It seems to me that opportunity is in the air to-night."
"And disaster," said Sir John, glancing at the spluttering candle. Lord Rosmore made no comment—perhaps did not hear the words, for he was intent upon watching Sydney Fellowes, who was standing near a door which opened into the hall. No one else appeared to notice him, not even the pretty girl he had spurned. She was too much engaged in consoling a youth who had lost heavily at basset.
Barbara was dull in her room. The silence was oppressive, for no sounds of the riotous company reached her there, and the pale moonlight on the terrace below, and over the sleeping woods, seemed to throw a mist of sadness over the world. She had opened the casement, and for a time had puzzled over her uncle and his strange guests. Something must be going forward at the Abbey of which she was ignorant. Sydney Fellowes must know this, and there had been more meaning in his words than she had imagined. Why ought she not to be at the Abbey? And then her thoughts wandered to another man who had found her in a place where no woman ought to be, and she remembered all Lord Rosmore had said about him. Looking out on the quiet, sleeping world, so full of mystery and the unknown, it was easy to fall into a reverie, to indulge in speculations which, waking again, she would hardly remember; easy to lose all count of time. Once, at some distance along the terrace towards the servants' quarters, there was the sound of slow footsteps and a low laugh. There were two shadows in the moonlight—a man's and a woman's. Some serving maid had found love, for the low laugh was a happy one, and some man, perchance no more than a groom, had suddenly become a hero in a girl's eyes. Unconsciously perhaps, Barbara sighed. That girl was happier than she was.
A gentle knock came at her door, and a man stood there.