Captain Lennox stroked his fair whiskers in surprise.
"Leave it!" he exclaimed. "Leave Heron Dyke!"
"I should. I should be afraid to stay. But then I am a woman, and women are apt to be timorous. If--if Katherine----"
Mrs. Carlyon broke off with a shiver. She rose from her seat and moved away, as though the subject were getting too much for her.
A strange mystery it indeed was, as the reader will admit when he shall hear its particulars later. But it was not the greatest mystery enacted, or to be enacted, at Heron Dyke.
"I have a favour to ask you, Mr. Conroy," began Ella, when they found themselves apart from the rest for a moment.
"You have but to name it," he answered, a smile in his speaking eyes as they glanced into hers.
"Will you let your portfolio remain here until tomorrow? I want to look at the sketches all by myself."
"They interest you?"
"Very much indeed. How I should like to have been in Paris during that terrible siege!"