He crept back and blew out each of the little oil lamps that were in the separate rooms.
All was darkness then; but it was evident there was another lamp in the actual bedchamber itself.
It was convenient for Blodget that there should be, at all events for a brief space, a light there.
‘Now courage and impudence assist me,’ he muttered.
As he spoke he on tiptoe glided into the bedchamber in which he would have wagered his life that Inez now slept.
The difficulty, though, he thought was really and truly at an end, when he, as he fancied, found himself so far successful as to be actually in the sleeping chamber of the young lady.
No wonder that even he, accustomed as he was to all sorts of escapades and strange eventful proceedings, felt a little affected at his own temerity when he set foot within the sacred precincts of that chamber.
The idea of what Monteagle would think and say when he heard of this evidence of unexampled audacity came across the mind of the unscrupulous villain, and for a moment he hesitated.
It struck him that, after all, such an outrage was of so diabolical and daring a character, that it would be difficult to say what might be the result of it.
But it was not for long that such a man as Blodget ever hesitated about the completion of an act of atrocity, or boldness or baseness.