She went first to the small dressing-room down stairs, catching up her serge and muffling herself in it once more, so that not a thread of her peasant’s dress appeared; then went silently in among the crowd, a very sober witch indeed.  It was a little while before she was molested.  By and by, while another charade was engaging people’s interest, Mme. Lasalle worked round to the muffled figure.

‘My dear,’ she whispered, ‘who was that?’

’One of your dominoes, Madame.  Acted with a good deal of spirit, didn’t you think so?’

’Magnifique!  But that was none of my dominoes.  My dear, you will never know how lovely your representation was.  But, that interruption was no part of our play, as we had planned it.  How came it?  Who was it?  Somebody who made play to suit himself?  How came it, Hazel?’

‘Just what I have been trying to find out,’ said the girl.  ’I shall not rest till I do.’  But she moved off then, and kept moving, and was soon too well taken possession of for many questions to reach her.  All of her audience but two or three, took the interruption for part of the play, and were loud in their praises.  Hearing and not hearing, muffled in thoughts yet more than in serge, as an actor or spectator the Witch of Endor saw the charades through, and played with her supper, and finally went out to her carriage and the dark world of night.  For there was no moon this time, and stars are uncertain things.

As Stuart Nightingale came back from putting her into the carriage, he encountered his aunt.

‘Well!’ he said in an impatient voice, smothered as it was, ‘that job’s all smoke.’

‘Who was it?’

‘That infernal meddler, of course.’

‘Rollo?’

‘Who else would have dared?’

‘How did he get in?’

’That you ought to know better than I. It was no fault of mine.’

‘Rollo!’ said Mme. Lasalle.  ’And I thought I had cleverly kept him out.  The tickets were not transferable.  Did she let him in?’

’Not she.  No doing of hers, nor liking, I promise you.  I think he has settled his own business, by the way.  But we can’t try this on a second time, Aunt Victorine.  Confound him!’

CHAPTER XXXVII.

IN A FOG.

Hazel was accompanied to her carriage of course, as usual.  But when she was shut in, she heard an unwelcome voice saying to the coachman, ‘Drive slowly, Reo; the night is very dark;’ and immediately the carriage door was opened again, and the speaker took his seat beside her; without asking leave this time.  A passing glare from the lamps of another carriage shewed her head and hands down on the window-sill, in the way she had come from Greenbush.  Neither head nor hands stirred now.

Her companion was silent and let her be still, until the carriage had moved out of the Moscheloo grounds and was quietly making its way along the dark high road.  Lamps flung some light right and left from the coach box; but within the darkness was deep.  The reflection from trees and bushes, the gleam of fence rails, the travelling spots of illumination in the road, did not much help matters there.