He hesitated how to act. Grasping with his right hand the revolver he invariably carried with him, he watched the maiden with the eyes of a lynx.
Not that he meant doing her any harm. He hardly knew what he meant. For a time he was subdued, but the greed of gain returned to him, and he placed his hand upon the watch.
“No,” he murmured, after a pause, “I will take nothing of her’s—nothing.”
“I am well repaid by looking at one so lovely.”
He withdrew his hand from the watch and retreated some two or three steps backwards towards the door of the room.
Then he became immovable again.
“This will never do,” he muttered. “If I go on like this I shall run the chance of being discovered; and how then? No, I must away at once, and yet, hang it, she is so very beautiful!”
He again rivetted his eyes on the form of the sleeper, upon which he once or twice cast the rays of his lantern.
“I’m a weak, silly fool to be overcome thus—an idiot. Bah! there must be an end to it.”
He turned round and crept through the half-opened door. Down the stairs, with faltering steps, he then proceeded. He entered the front parlour, and then the back. He stripped them of as many valuables as he could conveniently carry, and then passed out of the house by the back door.