“We wish not to disturb you over your reading, that is all,” said Miss Lavinia, coldly.  “Has anything happened to vex you, Richard?”

“What the devil makes you think that?”

The old lady was offended, and showed it by saying nothing more.  Natalie nestled closer to her aunt.  One after another the clock ticked off the minutes with painful distinctness in the stillness of the room.  Turlington suddenly threw aside the newspaper and left his corner.  “Let’s be good friends!” he burst out, with a clumsy assumption of gayety.  “This isn’t keeping Christmas-eve.  Let’s talk and be sociable.  Dearest Natalie!” He threw his arm roughly round Natalie, and drew her by main force away from her aunt.  She turned deadly pale, and struggled to release herself.  “I am suffering—­I am ill—­let me go!” He was deaf to her entreaties.  “What! your husband that is to be, treated in this way?  Mustn’t I have a kiss?—­I will!” He held her closer with one hand, and, seizing her head with the other, tried to turn her lips to him.  She resisted with the inbred nervous strength which the weakest woman living has in reserve when she is outraged.  Half indignant, half terrified, at Turlington’s roughness, Miss Lavinia rose to interfere.  In a moment more he would have had two women to overpower instead of one, when a noise outside the window suddenly suspended the ignoble struggle.

There was a sound of footsteps on the gravel-walk which ran between the house wall and the garden lawn.  It was followed by a tap—­a single faint tap, no more—­on one of the panes of glass.

They all three stood still.  For a moment more nothing was audible.  Then there was a heavy shock, as of something falling outside.  Then a groan, then another interval of silence—­a long silence, interrupted no more.

Turlington’s arm dropped from Natalie.  She drew back to her aunt.  Looking at him instinctively, in the natural expectation that he would take the lead in penetrating the mystery of what had happened outside the window, the two women were thunderstruck to see that he was, to all appearance, even more startled and more helpless than they were.  “Richard,” said Miss Lavinia, pointing to the window, “there is something wrong out there.  See what it is.”  He stood motionless, as if he had not heard her, his eyes fixed on the window, his face livid with terror.

The silence outside was broken once more; this time by a call for help.

A cry of horror burst from Natalie.  The voice outside—­rising wildly, then suddenly dying away again—­was not entirely strange to her ears.  She tore aside the curtain.  With voice and hand she roused her aunt to help her.  The two lifted the heavy bar from its socket; they opened the shutters and the window.  The cheerful light of the room flowed out over the body of a prostrate man, lying on his face.  They turned the man over.  Natalie lifted his head.

Her father!