om it; yet her watch seemed
to tick with extraordinary vigour, and her heart to beat harder than
common while she listened.

The door of communication between the two rooms was closed. Another
door in the smaller apartment opened to the passage, but this, she
remembered, was habitually locked on the inside. It couldn't be
Puckers, therefore, who thus disturbed her mistress's reflections,
unless that handmaiden had come down the chimney, or in at the window.

In this smaller room Miss Bruce kept her riding-habits, her
ball-dresses, her draperies of different fabric, her transparencies of
all kinds, and her jewels.

The house was very silent--so silent, that in the distant corridors
were distinctly audible those faint and ghostly footfalls, which
traverse all large houses after midnight. There were candles burning
on Maud's toilet-table, but they served rather to show how dismal were
the shadowy corners of the large, lofty bedroom, than to afford light
and confidence to its inmate.

She listened intently. Yes; she was sure she heard somebody in the
next room--a step that moved stealthily about; a noise as of woodwork
skilfully and cautiously forced open.

One moment she felt frightened. Then her courage came back the higher
for its interruption. She could have escaped from her own room into
the passage, easily enough, and so alarmed the house; but when she
reflected that its fighting garrison consisted only of an infirm old
butler--for the footman was absent on leave--there seemed little to
be gained by such a proceeding, if violence or robbery were really
intended. Besides, she rather scorned the idea of summoning assistance
till she had ascertained the amount of danger.

So she blew her candle out, crept to the door of the little room, and
laid her hand noiselessly on its lock.

Softly as she turned it, gently as she pushed the door back on its
hinges inch by inch, she did not succeed in entering unobserved. The
light of a shaded lantern flashed over her the instant she crossed the
threshold, dazzling her eyes indeed, yet not so completely but
that she made out the figure of a man standing over her shattered
jewel-box, of which he seemed to have been rifling the contents. Quick
as thought, she said to herself, "Come, there is only one! If I can
frighten _him_ more than he frightens _me_, the game is mine."

The man swore certain ghastly oaths in a whisper, and Maud was aware
of the muzzle of a pistol covering