Passing in from the brilliant sunshine, Olga felt actually cold.
It was dark also, the only light, besides that from the open door, proceeding from a stained-glass window at the farther end--a gruesome window representing in vivid colours the death of St.John the Baptist.
A carved oak chest, long and low, stood just within, and upon this the girl seated herself, with the great dog close beside her.

Her ten-mile bicycle ride in the heat had tired her.
There was no sound in the house save the ticking of an invisible clock.
It might have been a place bewitched, so intense and so uncanny was the silence, broken only by that grim ticking that sounded somehow as if it had gone on exactly the same for untold ages.
"What a ghostly old place it is, Cork!" Olga remarked to her companion.
"And you actually spend the night here! I can't think how you dare." In response to which Cork smiled with a touch of superiority and gave her to understand that he was too sensible to be afraid of shadows.
They were still sitting there conversing, with their faces to the sunlit garden, when there came the sound of a careless footfall and Violet Campion, her riding-whip dangling from her wrist, strolled round the corner of the house, and in at the open door.
She was laughing as she came, evidently at some joke that clung to her memory.
"Look at me!" she said.

"I'm all foam.

But I've conquered his majesty King Devil for once.

He's come back positively abject.