“I will see to the ladies,” he said abruptly, and waved his hand. They still hesitated a moment.
“Go,” he said again sharply, and pointed to the door. He was a magistrate, and responsible; and they turned and went.
Then Hubert looked at Isabel again.
“Isabel,” he said, “if I had known——”
“Stay,” she interrupted, “there is no time for explanations except mine. Anthony is in the house; I do not know where. You must save him.”
There was no entreaty or anxiety in her voice; nothing but a supreme dignity and an assurance that she would be obeyed.
“But——” he began. The door was opened from the hall, and a little party of searchers appeared, but halted when the magistrate turned round.
“Come with me,” he said to the two women, “you must have a room kept for you upstairs,” and he held back the door for them to pass.
Isabel put out her hand to Mary, and the two went out together into the hall past the men, who stood back to let them through, and Hubert followed. They turned to the left to the stairs, looking as they went upon the wild confusion. Above them rose the carved ceiling, and in the centre of the floor, untouched, by a strange chance, stood the dinner-table, still laid with silver and fruit and flowers. But all else was in disarray. The leather screen that had stood by the door into the entrance hall had been overthrown, and had carried with it a tall flowering plant that now lay trampled and broken before the hearth. A couple of chairs lay on their backs between the windows; the rug under the window was huddled in a heap, and all over the polished boards were scratches and dents; a broken sword-hilt lay on the floor with a feathered cap beside it. There were half a dozen men guarding the four doors; but the rest were gone; and from overhead came tramplings and shouts as the hunt swept to and fro in the upper floors.
At the top of the stairs was Mary’s room; the two ladies, who had gone silently upstairs with Hubert behind them, stopped at the door of it.