A distant hubbub had arisen in the main corridor, the banging of doors and laughter of careless voices.  It was some time after one o’clock, and the merry-markers were on their way to bed.

“Never mind them!” said Biddy.  “They’re just a set of noisy children.  Lie down again, Miss Isabel!  They’ll soon settle, and then p’raps ye’ll get to sleep.  It’s not this way they’ll be coming anyway.”

“Someone is coming this way,” said Isabel, listening with sudden close attention.

She was right.  The quiet tread of a man’s feet came down the corridor that led to their private suite.  A man’s hand knocked with imperious insistence upon the door.

“Sir Eustace!” said Biddy, in a dramatic whisper.  “Will I tell him ye’re asleep, Miss Isabel?  Quick now!  Get back to bed!”

But Isabel made no movement to comply.  She only drew herself together with the nervous contraction of one about to face a dreaded ordeal.

Quietly the door opened.  Biddy moved forward, her face puckered with anxiety.  She met Sir Eustace on the threshold.

“Miss Isabel hasn’t settled yet, Sir Eustace,” she told him, her voice cracked and tremulous.  “But she’ll not be wanting anybody to disturb her.  Will your honour say good night and go?”

There was entreaty in the words.  Her eyes besought him.  Her old gnarled hands gripped each other, trembling.

But Sir Eustace looked over her head as though she were not there.  His gaze sought and found his sister; and a frown gathered on his clear-cut, handsome face.

“Not in bed yet?” he said, and closing the door moved forward, passing Biddy by.

Isabel stood and faced him, but she drew back a step as he reached her, and a hunted look crept into her wide eyes.

“You are late,” she said.  “I thought you had forgotten to say good night.”

He was still in evening dress.  It was evident that he had only just come upstairs.  “No, I didn’t forget,” he said.  “And it seems I am not too late for you.  I shouldn’t have disturbed you if you had been asleep.”

She smiled a quivering, piteous smile.  “You knew I should not be asleep,” she said.

He glanced towards the bed which Biddy was setting in order with tender solicitude.  “I expected to find you in bed nevertheless,” he said.  “What made you get up again?”

She shook her head in silence, standing before him like a child that expects a merited rebuke.

He put a hand on her shoulder that was authoritative rather than kind.  “Lie down again!” he said.  “It is time you settled for the night.”

She threw him a quick, half-furtive look.  “No—­no!” she said hurriedly.  “I can’t sleep.  I don’t want to sleep.  I think I will get a book and read.”

His hand pressed upon her.  “Isabel!” he said quietly.  “When I say a thing I mean it.”

She made a quivering gesture of appeal.  “I can’t go to bed, Eustace.  It is like lying on thorns.  Somehow I can’t close my eyes to-night.  They feel red-hot.”