Mannering became interested.

“D’you mean for an instant he wants to try his luck after what’s happened?”

“You forget.  Your day has been so full that you forget what did happen.”

“I do not, Lennox.  Mary begged me to tackle the man.  I calmed him, and he came down to his luncheon.  He must have thought over the matter since then, and seen that he was playing with death.”

“Far from it, ‘The future is mine!’ That’s what he said.  And that means he’ll try and be in the Grey Room alone to-night.”

“I wish to Heaven you’d made this clear before we’d started.  But surely we can trust Sir Walter; he knows what this means, even if that superstitious lunatic doesn’t.”

“I don’t want to bother you,” answered Henry; “but, looking back, I’m none so sure that we can trust my uncle.  He’s been pretty wild to-day, and who shall blame him?  Things like this crashing into his life leave him guessing.  He’s very shaken, and has lost his mental grip, too.  Reality’s played him such ugly tricks that he may be tempted to fall back on unreality now.”

“You don’t mean he’ll let May go into that room to-night?”

“I hope not.  He was firm enough last night when the clergyman clamored to do so.  In fact, he made me keep watch to see he didn’t.  But I think he’s weakened a lot since Hardcastle came to grief in broad daylight.  And I sha’n’t be there to do anything.”

“All this comes too late,” answered the other.  “If harm has happened—­it has happened.  We can only pray they’ve preserved some sanity among them.”

“That’s why I say I hope they’re not bullying Mary,” answered Lennox.  “Of course, she’d be dead against her father-in-law’s idea.  But she won’t count.  She can’t control him if Sir Walter goes over to his side.”

“Let us not imagine anything so unreasonable.  We’ll telegraph to hear if all’s well at the first moment we can.”

The storm sent a heavy wash of rain against the side of the carriage.  It was a famous tempest, that punished the South of England from Land’s End to the North Foreland.

They were distracted from their thoughts by the terrific impact of the wind.

“Wonder we can stop on the rails,” said Mannering.  “This is a fifty-knot gale, or I’m mistaken.”

“I’m thinking of the Chadlands trees,” answered the other.  “It’s rum how, in the middle of such an awful business as this, the mind switches off to trifles.  Does it on purpose, I suppose, to relieve the strain.  Yes, the trees will catch it to-night.  I expect I shall hear a grim tale of fallen timber from Sir Walter by the time I get back to-morrow.”

“If nothing’s fallen but timber, I sha’n’t mind,” answered Mannering; “but you’ve made me devilish uneasy now.  If anything further went wrong—­well, to put it mildly, they would say your uncle ought to have known a great deal better.”