“I can’t humble her!” she thought.  “I can’t make her fear me.  I can’t triumph over her, do what I will.  I have her secret and I hold her in my power, but she is prouder than Lucifer himself, and she would let me stand forth and tell all, and if one pleading word would stop me, she would not say it.  ‘The brave may die, but can not yield!’ She should have been a man.”

She went to the window and drew out her watch; it wanted a quarter of eight.

“In fifteen minutes my lady goes; in fifteen more I shall follow her, and not alone.  I am afraid Sir Everard’s slumbers will be rather disturbed to-night.”

The last yellow gleam of the dying day was gone, and a sickly, pallid moon glimmered dully among drifts of scudding black clouds.  An icy blast wailed up from the sea, and the rocking trees were like dryad specters in writhing agony.  The distant Beech Walk looked black and grim and ghostly in the weird light.

A great clock high up in a windy turret struck eight.  A moment after the door of my lady’s dressing-room opened.  A dark, shrouded figure emerged, flitted swiftly down the long gallery, down the stair-way, and vanished.

Ten minutes later Edwards, yawning forlornly, still in the entrance hall, beheld Miss Silver coming toward him with an anxious face, a large shawl thrown over her head.

“Going out again?” the valet exclaimed.  “And such a nasty night, too.  You are fond of walking, Miss S., and no mistake.”

“I’m not going for a walk,” said Sybilla.  “I am going to look for a locket I lost this afternoon.  I was out in the park, in the direction of the Beech Walk, and there I must have dropped it.”

“Better wait until to-morrow,” suggested Edwards.  “The wind’s ’owling through the trees, and it’s colder than the Harctic regions.  Better wait.”

“I can not.  The locket was a present, and I value it exceedingly.  I thought of asking you to accompany me, but as it is so cold perhaps you had better not.”

“Oh, I’ll go with pleasure!” said Mr. Edwards.  “If you can stand the cold, I can, I dessay.  Wait till I get my ’at and hovercoat—­I won’t be a minute.”

Miss Silver waited.  Mr. Edwards reappeared in a twinkling.

“’Adn’t I better fetch a lantern?” he suggested.  “It will be himpossible to see it, heven if it should be there.”

“No,” said Sybilla.  “The moon is shining, and the locket will glimmer on the snow.  Come!”

She took his arm, and they started at a brisk pace for the Beech Walk.  The ground, baked hard as iron, rang under their tread, and whether it was the bitter blast or not, Mr. Edwards could not tell, but his companion’s face was flushed with a more brilliant glow, in the ghostly moonlight, than he had ever before seen there.

They reached the long grove of magnificent copper-beeches, and just without its entrance Miss Silver began searching for her lost locket.