"Locked, too," said Tremenhere, after trying it.
"I won't be bweaten!" cried Vellumy; "stwop a moment. I'll run down the pwassage, and gwet the keys out of the other doors; they'll most likely opwen this;" and back he ran. Tremenhere stood looking after him.
"Here," he called out, though under his breath, from the end of the passage; "here's a key—twy it;" and he flung it down the carpeted corridor. "I'll go look for mwore."
Tremenhere raised the key and applied it to the lock, which yielded at once; he entered unhesitatingly, with that freedom natural to a bachelor-house, and found himself in a small antechamber leading to Lord Randolph's own rooms; for an instant he stood irresolute. Which way turn? the picture-gallery was the object of his search. There were two doors in this room—one opposite the one by which he had entered; towards this he moved, and, gently turning the handle, found himself at the entrance of a small, but elegantly-furnished sitting-room. There were no lights, except from the fire, which threw a wide, cheerful blaze over all. A sofa was drawn close to it, and on this sat a lady, leaning half over the arm of it; her back was turned to the door, which had opened noiselessly. The light was not uncertain, and it threw its fullest blaze on that fair form—and that fair form was Minnie's!
Tremenhere stood still—a statue-like stillness. Life seemed fading away in horror. He felt drunk for a moment with suffering; then vision, thought—all cleared away into perfect sobriety, and he strode silently towards her. She started, and, dropping her book, uttered a cry of surprise, and, by an involuntary feeling of sudden alarm, shrunk back; then, seeing who it was, exclaimed in joy, if he could so have read it,—
"Oh, Miles, is that you? but you startled me, indeed, standing like a ghost, there. You look as if you did not expect me!"
"You here—you here!" he muttered with cold lips. "In these rooms! and why here at all?" And he held his hands before him to keep her back.
"Miles," she cried, still advancing; and though the face grew pale with some sudden fear of untimely birth, for it was so unexpected, yet the brow was clear and pure to all but a jealous man. "You know wherefore I am here; think—you must be mad!"
"Mad!" he echoed, staring wildly; "I must be mad, or dreaming!—you were locked in, and in these rooms."
"Where am I?" she cried, looking hurriedly round.