"Yes, I suppose so. Put the box down, please. No, it need not be uncorded until I know whether I shall stay the night."
The man obeyed her somewhat imperiously-uttered commands with an air of careful submission. He then went down the dark stairs. Kitty heard his footsteps for some little distance. Then, came the sound of a closing door, and the click of a key in the lock. Then silence. Was she locked in? She wished that the baize door had not been closed, and she chid herself for nervousness. Hugo had shut it accidentally—it would be all right when he came back. Excited and fearful as she was, she chose to fortify herself against the unknown, by swallowing a biscuit and a draught of black coffee. When this was done she felt stronger in every way—morally as well as physically. She had been faint for want of food.
Would Hugo never come back? He was absent a quarter-of-an-hour, she verified that fact by reference to a little enamelled watch which Elizabeth had given her on her last birthday. She had taken off her hat and cloak, and smoothed her rebellious locks into something like order before he returned.
"Why have you been so long?" she said, rather plaintively, when the door moved at last. "And, oh, please, if I am to stop here at all, will you find out whether I can have the key of that door? The man who brought up my boxes says it will not open from this side, and I cannot bear to feel that I am shut in. May I go to papa, now?"
"You do not like being a prisoner, do you?" said Hugo, totally ignoring, her last question. "So much the better for you—so much the better for me."
Kitty recoiled a little. She did not know what had happened to him, but she saw that his face expressed some mood which she had never seen it express before. It was flushed, and his eyes glittered with an unnatural light. And surely there was a faint odour of brandy in the room which had not been there before his entrance! She recoiled from him, but she was brave enough to show no other sign of fear.
"I don't know what you mean," she said, "but I know that I want to go to my father. Please put an end to this mystery and take me to him at once."
"Yes, I will put an end to the mystery," said Hugo, drawing nearer to her, and putting out his hands as if he wished to take hers. "There is more of a mystery than you can guess, but there shall be one no longer. Ah, Kitty, won't you forgive me when I tell you what I have done? It was for your sake that I have sunk to these depths—or risen to these heights, I hardly know which to call them—for your sake, because I love you, love you as no other woman in the world, Kitty, was ever loved before!"
He threw himself down on his knees before her, in passionate self-abasement, and lifted his ardent eyes pleadingly to her face.
"Kitty, forgive me," he said. "Tell me that you forgive me before I tell you what I have done."