Circumstances were strongly against him--his knowledge of her secret; his nocturnal appointment; her disappearance.

Sybilla did not doubt but that he would consider discretion the better part of valor, and fly.
She went back to the house, intensely perplexed.

There the confusion was at its height.

The scabbard had been found near the terrace, with the baronet's initials thereon.
Men looked into each other's blank faces, afraid to speak the frightful thoughts that filled their minds.
And in his room Sir Everard lay in a deep stupor--it was not sleep.
Sybilla, upon the first faint signs of consciousness, had administered a powerful opiate.
"He must sleep," she said, resolutely, to Edwards.

"It may save his life and his reason.