He wanted to be alone, to think.

But when he followed her she stopped him in the hall.

Buck Daniels lumbered slowly after them in a clumsy attempt at sauntering.
"Well ?" asked Kate Cumberland.
She had thrown a blue mantle over her shoulders when she entered the house, and the touch of boyish self-confidence which had been hers on the ride was gone.

In its place there was something even more difficult for Randall Byrne to face.

If there had been a garish brightness about her when he had first seen her, the brilliancy of a mirror playing in the sun against his feeble eyes, there was now a blending of pastel shades, for the hall was dimly illumined and the shadow tarnished her hair and her pallor was like cold stone; even her eyes were misted by fear.