She determined upon her course of action. She would know the worst.
She blew out the lamp on her toilette table, and crept to the door of the smaller room, in which our hero was now so busily occupied.
She put her ear to the keyhole, and heard the burglar’s movements more distinctly. She laid her hand noiselessly on its lock.
Softly as she turned it, gently as she pushed the door back on its hinges inch by inch, she did not succeed in entering unobserved.
The light of a shaded lantern flashed over her the instant she crossed the threshold, dazzling her eyes indeed, yet not so completely but that she made out the figure of a man standing over her shattered jewel-box of which he seemed to have been rifling the contents.
Quick as thought, she said to herself—
“Come, there is only one. If I can frighten him more than he frightens me the game is mine.”
The man uttered a series of impious oaths in a whisper, and the lady was aware of the muzzle of a pistol covering her above the dark lantern.
She wondered why she was not frightened. It was most remarkable, for her position was one of imminent peril; but she did not lose her presence of mind.
She could distinguish a dark figure behind the spot of intense light radiating round her own person, and perceived besides, almost without looking, that an entrance had been made by the window, which stood wide open, so as to disclose the topmost rounds of a garden ladder propped against the sill.