"I will do the same."
"Gilbertine—God be thanked—is not alone in her room. Little Miss Lane shares it with her."
"And Dorothy?"
"Oh, she is under the strictest bondage night and day. She sleeps in a little room off her aunt's. Do you know her door?"
I shook my head.
"I will pass down the hall and stop an instant before the two doors we are most interested in. When I pass Gilbertine's I will throw out my right hand."
I stood on the threshold of his room and watched him. When the two doors were well fixed in my mind, I went to my own room and prepared for my self-imposed watch. When quite ready, I put out my light. It was then eleven o'clock.
The house was very quiet. There had been the usual bustle attending the separation of a party of laughing, chattering girls for the night, but this had not lasted long, for the great doings of the morrow called for bright eyes and fresh cheeks, and these can only be gained by sleep. In this stillness twelve o'clock struck and the first hour of my anxious vigil was at an end. I thought of Sinclair. He had given no token of the watch he was keeping, but I knew he was sitting with his ear to the door, listening for the alarm which must come soon if it came at all.
But would it come at all? Were we not wasting strength and a great deal of emotion on a dread which had no foundation in fact? What were we two sensible and, as a rule, practical men thinking of, that we should ascribe to either of these dainty belles of a conventional and shallow society the wish to commit a deed calling for the vigor and daring of some wilful child of nature? It was not to be thought of in this sober, reasoning hour. We had given ourselves over to a ghastly nightmare and would yet awake.
Why was I on my feet? Had I heard anything?