"Dr. Cairn!" whispered Lady Lashmore, tremulously, "some dreadful thing, something that I cannot comprehend but that I fear and loathe with all my soul, has come to me. Oh—for pity's sake, give me a word of hope! Save for you, I am alone with a horror I cannot name. Tell me—"
At the door, he turned.
"Be brave," he said—and went out.
Lady Lashmore sat still as one who had looked upon Gorgon, her beautiful eyes yet widely opened and her face pale as death; for he had not even told her to hope.
Robert Cairn was sitting smoking in the library, a bunch of notes before him, when Dr. Cairn returned to Half-Moon Street. His face, habitually fresh coloured, was so pale that his son leapt up in alarm. But Dr. Cairn waved him away with a characteristic gesture of the hand.
"Sit down, Rob," he said, quietly; "I shall be all right in a moment. But I have just left a woman—a young woman and a beautiful woman—whom a fiend of hell has condemned to that which my mind refuses to contemplate."
Robert Cairn sat down again, watching his father.
"Make out a report of the following facts," continued the latter, beginning to pace up and down the room.
He recounted all that he had learnt of the history of the house of Dhoon and all that he had learnt of recent happenings from Lord and Lady Lashmore. His son wrote rapidly.