NIGHTFALL

by

ANTHONY PRYDE







CHAPTER I


"Tea is ready, Bernard," said Laura Clowes, coming in from the
garden.

It was five o'clock on a June afternoon, but the hall was so dark
that she had to grope her way. Wanhope was a large, old-fashioned
manor-house, a plain brick front unbroken except in the middle, where
its corniced roof was carried down by steps to an immense gateway of
weathered stone, carved with the escutcheon of the family and their
Motto: FORTIS ET FIDELIS. Wistarias rambled over both sides,
wreathing the stone window-frames in their grape-like clusters of
lilac bloom, and flagstones running from end to end, shallow, and so
worn that a delicate growth of stonecrop fringed them, shelved down
to a lawn.

Indoors in the great hall it was dark because floor and staircase