“Then that is settled,” she said, at last.

George nodded, Bellamy said nothing.

“I suppose that silence gives consent.  Very well, I will take the first step to-morrow.  I do not like Angela Caresfoot, but, upon my word, I shall be sorry for her before she is twenty-four hours older.  She is made of too fine a material to be sold into such hands as yours, George Caresfoot.”

George looked up menacingly, but said nothing.

“I have often urged you to give this up; now I urge no more—­the thing is done in spirit, it may as well be done in reality.  I told you long ago that it was a most dreadfully wicked thing, and that nothing but evil can come of it.  Do not say that I have not warned you.”

“Come, stop that devil’s talk,” growled George.

“Devil’s talk!—­that is a good word, George, for it is of the devil’s wages that I am telling you.  Now listen, I am going to prophecy.  A curse will fall upon this house and all within it.  Would you like to have a sign that I speak the truth?  Then wait.”  She was standing up, her hand stretched out, and in the dim light she looked like some heathen princess urging a bloody sacrifice to her gods.  Her forebodings terrified her hearers, and, by a common impulse, they rose and moved away from her.

At that moment a strange thing happened.  A gust of wind, making its way from some entrance in the back of the house, burst open the door of the room in which they were, and entered with a cold flap as of wings.  Next second a terrible crash resounded from the other end of the room.  George turned white as a sheet, and sank into a chair, cursing feebly.  Bellamy gave a sort of howl of terror, and shrank up to his wife, almost falling into the fire in his efforts to get behind her.  Lady Bellamy alone, remaining erect and undaunted, laughed aloud.

“Come, one of you brave conspirators against a defenceless girl, strike a light, for the place is as dark as a vault, and let us see what has happened.  I told you that you should have a sign.”

After several efforts, George succeeded in doing as she bade him, and held a candle forward in his trembling hand.

“Come, don’t be foolish,” she said; “a picture has fallen, that is all.”

He advanced to look at it, and then benefited his companions with a further assortment of curses.  The picture, on examination, proved to be a large one that he had, some years previously, had painted of Isleworth, with the Bellamys and himself in the foreground.  The frame was shattered, and all the centre of the canvass torn out by the weight of its fall on to a life-sized and beautiful statue of Andromeda chained to a rock, awaiting her fate with a staring look of agonized terror in her eyes.

“An omen, a very palpable omen,” said Lady Bellamy, with one of her dark smiles.  “Isleworth and ourselves destroyed by being smashed against a marble girl, who rises uninjured from the wreck.  Eh, John?”