thout any attempt at approach on their part, and
when I lifted my head again it was to catch a glimpse of their side faces
as they turned to look elsewhere for what they were plainly in search
of. An oath, muffled but stern, which was the first word above a whisper
that I had heard issue from their lips, told me that they had reached
_the_ room and had come upon the horror which lay there. What would they
say to it! Would they know who she was--her name, her quality, her
story--and respect her dead as they certainly must have respected her
living? I listened but caught only a low murmur as they conferred
together. I imagined their movements; saw them in my mind's eye leaning
over that death-tenanted couch, pointing with accusing finger at those
two dark marks, and consulting each other with side-long looks, as they
passed from one detail of her appearance to another. I even imagined them
crossing the floor and lifting the two cordial glasses just as I had
done, and then slowly setting them down again, with perhaps a lift of the
brows or a suggestive shake of the head; and maddened by my own
intolerable position, drawn by a power I felt it impossible to resist, I
crept to my feet and took my staggering way down the half-dozen steps of
the gallery and thence along by the left-hand wall towards the further
doorway, and through it to where these men stood weighing the chances in
which my life and honour were involved, and those of one other of whom I
dared not think and would not have these men think for all that was left
me of hope and happiness.

It was dark in the ballroom, and it was only a little less so in the
corridor. All the light was in _that_ room; but I still slid along the
wall like a thief, with eyes set and ears agape for any chance word which
might reach me. Suddenly I heard one. It was this, uttered with a
decision which had the strange effect of lifting my head and making a man
of me again:

"That settles it. He will find it hard to escape after this."

_He!_ I had been dreading to hear a _she_. Yet why? Who on God's earth,
save myself, could know that Carmel had been within these woeful walls
to-night. _He!_ I never stopped to question who was meant by this
definite pronoun. I was not even conscious of caring very much. I was in
a coil of threatening troubles, but I was in it alone, and, greatly
relieved by the discovery, I drew myself up and stepped quickly forward
into the room where the two officials