The two young men went to her ladyship’s sitting room.  She was alone, a volume of her favourite Schopenhauer open before her, under the light of the shaded reading-lamp.  Sorry comfort in the hour of trouble!

Maulevrier went over to her and kissed her; and then dropped silently into a chair near at hand, his face in shadow.  Hartfield seated himself nearer the sofa, and nearer the lamp.

‘Dear Lady Maulevrier, I have come to tell you some very bad news—­’

‘Lesbia?’ exclaimed her ladyship, with a frightened look.

’No, there is nothing wrong with Lesbia.  It is about your old servant Steadman.’

‘Dead?’ faltered Lady Maulevrier, ashy pale, as she looked at him in the lamplight.

He bent his head affirmatively.

’Yes.  He was seized with apoplexy—­fell from his chair to the hearth, and never spoke or stirred again.’

Lady Maulevrier uttered no word of sorrow or surprise.  She lay, looking straight before her into vacancy, the pale attenuated features rigid as if they had been marble.  What was to be done—­what must be told—­whom could she trust?  Those were the questions repeating themselves in her mind as she stared into space.  And no answer came to them.

No answer came, except the opening of the door opposite her couch.  The handle turned slowly, hesitatingly, as if moved by feeble fingers; and then the door was pushed slowly open, and an old man came with shuffling footsteps towards the one lighted spot in the middle of the room.

It was the old man Lord Hartfield had last seen gloating over his treasury of gold and jewels—­the man whom Maulevrier had never seen—­whose existence for forty years had been hidden from every creature in that house, except Lady Maulevrier and the Steadmans, until Mary found her way into the old garden.

He came close up to the little table in front of Lady Maulevrier’s couch, and looked down at her, a strange, uncanny being, withered and bent, with pale, faded eyes in which there was a glimmer of unholy light.

‘Good-evening to you, Lady Maulevrier,’ he said in a mocking voice.  ’I shouldn’t have known you if we had met anywhere else.  I think, of the two of us, you are more changed than I.’

She looked up at him, her features quivering, her haughty head drawn back; as a bird shrinks from the gaze of a snake, recoiling, but too fascinated to fly.  Her eyes met his with a look of unutterable horror.  For some moments she was speechless, and then, looking at Lord Hartfield, she said, piteously—­

’Why did you let him come here?  He ought to be taken care of—­shut up.  It is Steadman’s old uncle—­a lunatic—­I sheltered.  Why is he allowed to come to my room?’

‘I am Lord Maulevrier,’ said the old man, drawing himself up and planting his crutch stick upon the floor; ’I am Lord Maulevrier, and this woman is my wife.  Yes, I am mad sometimes, but not always, I have my bad fits, but not often.  But I never forget who and what I am, Algernon, Earl of Maulevrier, Governor of Madras.’