It was no easy path that lay before her, but she had not forgotten how narrowly she had escaped the precipice.  Even yet she still trembled when she remembered the all-engulfing pit of destruction that had opened before her, and the anguish of fear that had possessed her until deliverance had come.  Lucas Errol had been her deliverer.  She remembered that also, and a faint, sad smile touched her lips—­Lucas Errol, king and cripple, ruler and weakling.

Softly the sunset faded.  Anne’s fingers ceased to roam over the keys.  She clasped them in her lap and sat still.

All at once a quiet voice spoke.  “My lady!”

With a start she turned.  “Dimsdale!  How you startled me!”

“I beg your ladyship’s pardon,” the old man said.

He was standing close behind her.  There was an air of subdued importance about him.  He was grave to severity.

But Anne did not look at him very critically.  “I shall not want any tea,” she said.  “I will dine at eight in my sitting-room as usual.  Is everything in readiness, Dimsdale?  Is Sir Giles’s room just as it should be?”

“Yes, my lady.”

Anne rose and quietly closed the piano.  She wondered why Dimsdale lingered, and after a moment it struck her that he had something to say.  She took up her gloves and turned round to him.

“No one has been, I suppose?”

“No one, my lady.”

“Are there any letters?”

“No letters, my lady.”

“Then—­” Anne paused, and for the first time looked at the old servant attentively.  “Is anything the matter, Dimsdale?” she asked.

He hesitated, the fingers of one hand working a little, an unusual sign of agitation with him.

With an effort at last he spoke.  “Your ladyship instructed me to open any telegram that might arrive.”

Her heart gave a great throb of foreboding.  “Certainly,” she said.  “Has there been a telegram then?”

Dimsdale’s hand clenched.  He looked at her anxiously, rather piteously.

“My lady—­” he said, and stopped.

Anne stood like a statue.  She felt as if her vitality were suddenly arrested, as if every pulse had ceased to beat.

“Please go on,” she said in a whisper.  “There has been a telegram.  Either give it to me, or—­tell me what was in it.”

Dimsdale made a jerky movement, as if pulling himself together.  He put an unsteady hand into his breast-pocket.  “It came this afternoon, my lady, about an hour ago.  I am afraid it’s bad news—­very bad news.  Yes, my lady, I’m telling you, I’m telling you.  I regret to say Sir Giles has been took worse, took very sudden like, and—­and—­”

“He is dead,” Anne said very clearly, very steadily, in a tone that was neither of question nor of exclamation.

Dimsdale bent his head.  “He died at half-past three, my lady.”

He had the telegram in his hand.  Anne took it from him and moved very quietly to the window.