e saw in the room his face gave no hint. He opened the door
wider, and now Hanaud saw. Ricardo, trembling with excitement, watched
him. But again there was no expression of surprise, consternation, or
delight. He stood stolidly and watched. Then he turned to Ricardo,
placed a finger on his lips, and made room. Ricardo crept on tiptoe to
his side. And now he too could look in. He saw a brightly lit bedroom
with a made bed. On his left were the shuttered windows overlooking the
lake. On his right in the partition wall a door stood open. Through the
door he could see a dark, windowless closet, with a small bed from
which the bedclothes hung and trailed upon the floor, as though some
one had been but now roughly dragged from it. On a table, close by the
door, lay a big green hat with a brown ostrich feather, and a white
cloak. But the amazing spectacle which kept him riveted was just in
front of him. An old hag of a woman was sitting in a chair with her
back towards them. She was mending with a big needle the holes in an
old sack, and while she bent over her work she crooned to herself some
French song. Every now and then she raised her eyes, for in front of
her, under her charge, Mlle. Celie, the girl of whom Hanaud was in
search, lay helpless upon a sofa. The train of her delicate green frock
swept the floor. She was dressed as Helene Vauquier had described. Her
gloved hands were tightly bound behind her back, her feet were crossed
so that she could not have stood, and her ankles were cruelly strapped
together. Over her face and eyes a piece of coarse sacking was
stretched like a mask, and the ends were roughly sewn together at the
back of her head. She lay so still that, but for the labouring of her
bosom and a tremor which now and again shook her limbs, the watchers
would have thought her dead. She made no struggle of resistance; she
lay quiet and still. Once she writhed, but it was with the uneasiness
of one in pain, and the moment she stirred the old woman's hand went
out to a bright aluminium flask which stood on a little table at her
side.

"Keep quiet, little one!" she ordered in a careless, chiding voice, and
she rapped with the flask peremptorily upon the table. Immediately, as
though the tapping had some strange message of terror for the girl's
ear, she stiffened her whole body and lay rigid.

"I am not ready for you yet, little fool," said the old woman, and she
bent again to her work.

Ricardo's brain whirl