Sounds gain a curious distinctness and meaning in the hour of the break of the dawn; in such an hour they seem even more significant than sounds heard in the dead of night.  When she had gone to the window she had fancied that she heard something in the corridor outside her door, but when she had listened there had been only silence.  Now there was sound again—­that of a softly moved slippered foot.  She went to the room’s centre and waited.  Yes, certainly something had stirred in the passage.  She went to the door itself.  The dragging step had hesitated—­stopped.  Could it be Rosalie who had come to her for something.  For one second her impulse was to open the door herself; the next, she had changed her mind with a sense of shock.  Someone had actually touched the handle and very delicately turned it.  It was not pleasant to stand looking at it and see it turn.  She heard a low, evidently unintentionally uttered exclamation, and she turned away, and with no attempt at softening the sound of her footsteps walked across the room, hot with passionate disgust.  As well as if she had flung the door open, she knew who stood outside.  It was Nigel Anstruthers, haggard and unseemly, with burned-out, sleepless eyes and bitten lip.

Bad and mad as she had at last seen the situation to be, it was uglier and more desperate than she could well know.

CHAPTER XLV

THE PASSING BELL

The following morning Sir Nigel did not appear at the breakfast table.  He breakfasted in his own room, and it became known throughout the household that he had suddenly decided to go away, and his man was packing for the journey.  What the journey or the reason for its being taken happened to be were things not explained to anyone but Lady Anstruthers, at the door of whose dressing room he appeared without warning, just as she was leaving it.

Rosalie started when she found herself confronting him.  His eyes looked hot and hollow with feverish sleeplessness.

“You look ill,” she exclaimed involuntarily.  “You look as if you had not slept.”

“Thank you.  You always encourage a man.  I am not in the habit of sleeping much,” he answered.  “I am going away for my health.  It is as well you should know.  I am going to look up old Broadmorlands.  I want to know exactly where he is, in case it becomes necessary for me to see him.  I also require some trifling data connected with Ffolliott.  If your father is coming, it will be as well to be able to lay my hands on things.  You can explain to Betty.  Good-morning.”  He waited for no reply, but wheeled about and left her.