“I would have undertaken it,” came the answer. “I would have locked him in my oratory, the key of which never leaves my bosom.”
“Nevertheless if it was important to that man to steal it from you, it would not remain in your bosom very long.”
A startled cry interrupted the speaker, and told me that Sophia had made the fatal discovery of the loss of her key.
I held my breath in the most dreadful suspense. Everything now depended on this woman. If she allowed the least hint, I knew that Petrovitch would never leave the room without at least an attempt to change my supposed trance into death.
Fortunately the Princess was equal to the emergency. I heard her give a slight laugh.
“I am punished for my assurance,” she confessed. “I am not quite hardened, as you know; and when I realized that M. V—— was actually dead, I was obliged to pray for him. I have left the key in the door.”
“Go and fetch it, then.”
The tone in which these words were spoken was harsh. I heard Sophia going out of the room, and in an instant, with a single bound, as it seemed, the man was leaning over me, feeling my pulse, listening for my heart, and testing whether I breathed.
“If I had brought so much as a knife with me, I would have made sure,” I heard him mutter to himself.
Fortunately Sophia’s absence did not last ten seconds. She must have snatched up the first key that came to hand, that of a jewel-box most likely, and hurried back with it.