We took our candles, and, bidding the others good-night, left the billiard-room. I parted from York at the top of the staircase, and, passing Lady Baradell's room, turned into my own, and shut the door behind me.
It was a warm moonlight night, and I opened my window wide and leaned out for some time before beginning to undress. I still felt worried and a little apprehensive. The proverbial statement about "a woman scorned" appeared to me a very mild way of expressing what Lady Baradell's emotions would probably be under a similar provocation. I had hoped some instinct would tell Mercia what I was risking on her account.
At last, however, the beauty of the garden, bathed as it was in great spaces of silver and shadow, gradually began to soothe my mind into a state of sleepy tranquillity. Finally, with a little yawn, I dismissed Lady Baradell and all the other complications that surrounded me to their proper place, and, drawing down the blind, undressed and got into bed.
I think it must have been the light that kept me awake, for I generally go to sleep at once. As it was, I lay for some time in a kind of drowsy semi-consciousness that was just stealing into slumber, when a faint sound suddenly brought me up alert and open-eyed. In a moment I had jumped out of bed.
The door of my room opened quietly, and in the pale gleam of the moonshine I saw Lady Baradell. She was wearing a long blue silk dressing-gown, her feet were bare, and her bronze hair floated down over her shoulders. I must admit she looked wonderfully attractive.
Closing the door noiselessly, she glided towards me, a laughing gleam of triumph in her eyes.
"Ah, Stuart, Stuart!" she whispered, holding out her hands.
I don't think I have ever felt quite such a fool in my life.