Presently she shivered; the night had turned cold.

She heard the cry of some small bird attacked by a midnight prowler; was it the sparrow-hawk after its prey?
From the other side of the house came the sound of slow and firm footsteps, then the opening and shutting of a door.
Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse had played his part for to-night: silently as he had gone, so he returned to his room, whilst in another corner of the sparrow-hawk's nest a young girl slept, dreaming dreams of patriots and heroes, of causes nobly won, of poverty and obscurity gloriously endured.
Mistress de Chavasse with a sigh half of regret, half of indifference, finally turned her back on the moonlit garden and went within..