It was broad daylight, she assured herself.
She had but to cross the room to the bell beside the fireplace.

Nay, she had only to scream--and she was very near to screaming--to bring the servants to her rescue.

But she dared not do it.

Before she was half-way to the bell, before the cry was out of her mouth she would feel his fingers close about her throat.
* * * * * Mrs.Repton had begun to tell her story with reluctance, dreading lest Thresk should attribute it to a woman's nerves and laugh.

But he did not.
He listened gravely, seriously; and, as she continued, that nightmare of an evening so lived again in her recollections that she could not but make it vivid in her words.
"I had more than a mere sense of danger," she said.