Audrey turned hastily to her husband.

“Good Heavens, Miles!  We can’t let him come down!  Mrs. Durward will be here with us.”

“Well?”—­placidly from Herrick.

“Well!  It will be anything but well!” retorted Audrey significantly.  “Have you forgotten what happened that day in Haven Woods?  I’m not going to have Garth hurt like that again!  He may have been cashiered a hundred times—­I don’t care whether he was or not!—­he’s a man!”

A very charming smile broke over Miles’s face.

“I’ve always known it,” he said quietly.  “And—­I should think Mrs. Durward knows it now.”

“Yes.  I know it now.”

The low, contralto tones that answered were Elisabeth’s.  Unnoticed, she had entered the room and was standing just outside the little group of people clustered round the hearth—­her slim, black-robed figure, with its characteristic little air of stateliness, sharply defined in the ruddy glow of the firelight.

A sudden tremor of emotion seemed to ripple through the room.  The atmosphere grew tense, electric—­alert as with some premonition of coming storm.

The two men had risen to their feet, but no one spoke, and the brief rustle of movement, as every one turned instinctively towards that slender, sable figure, whispered into blank silence.

To Miles, infinitely compassionate, there seemed something symbolical in the figure of the woman standing there—­isolated, outside the friendly circle of the fireside group, standing solitary at the table as a prisoner stands at the bar of judgment.

The firelight, flickering across her face, revealed its pallor and the burning fever of her eyes, and drew strange lights from the heavy chestnut hair that swathed her head like a folded banner of flame.

For a long moment she stood silently regarding the ring of startled faces turned towards her.  Then at last she spoke.

“I have something to tell you,” she said, addressing herself primarily, it seemed, to Miles.

Perhaps she recognized the compassionate spirit of understanding which was his in so great a measure and appealed to it unconsciously.  Selwyn, with sensitive perception, turned as though to leave the room, but she stopped him.

“No, don’t go,” she said quickly.  “Please stay—­all of you.  I—­I wish you all to hear what I have to say.”  She spoke very composedly, with a curious submissive dignity, as though she had schooled herself to meet this moment.  “It concerns Garth Trent—­at least, that is the name by which you know him.  His real name is Maurice—­Maurice Kennedy, and he is my cousin, Lord Grisdale’s younger son.  He has lived here under an assumed name because—­because”—­her voice trembled a little, then steadied again to its accustomed even quality—­“because I ruined his life. . . .  The only way in which I can make amends is by telling you the true facts of the Indian Frontier episode which led to Maurice’s dismissal from the Army.  He—­ought never to have been—­cashiered for cowardice.”