"Will you let me go now?" she begged brokenly, and he went to open the door for her.
"You'll say nothing about it to anyone till—the time comes," he stipulated before he would turn the key, and to that also she agreed with a nod, not trusting herself to speak.
She was very thankful that she met no one on her way to her own rooms, for her eyes were wet. She had never felt so utterly forlorn and friendless as now. There was no one in whom she might safely confide, no one who could help her safely past the promise into which she had been tricked, that promise to which, she did not doubt, the law would hold her firmly. And, in any case, she could not have gone back on board the Olive Branch—to a fate even worse.
Ambrizette was awaiting her, to dress her for dinner, but, on a sudden impulse, she sat down at the escritoire in her boudoir to write a few hurried lines to Carthew. She thought she would like to see him again, before—
Her letter ready, she bade Ambrizette ring the bell. It was the maid Mairi who answered it, and, when Sallie looked up again, she saw that the girl was silently crying.
"What's the matter, Mairi?" she asked in her gentle voice, forgetting her own cruel cares for the moment, and at that the half-hysterical maid broke into a storm of unintelligible explanations in Gaelic, with here and there a broken sentence that Sallie could understand.
Her heavy-hearted mistress rose and put a protecting arm about her.
"You must tell me what the trouble is," said Sallie softly, "and I'll try to help you. What is it that has gone wrong?"
"Ochon—ochon—ochanorie!" the girl sobbed. "It is for your ladyship—not for me—and I was not to tell you, whatever. But—it is not right at all that I must not speak. Your ladyship should be told in time—it is that the White Lady has come to the castle again—and—there will be doom to follow before daylight. Ochon, ochon!"
Sallie shivered in spite of herself, as she recalled the uncanny legend which Mr. Jobling had related on the evening of their arrival. She had scarcely thought of it since, but now—