“Poor thing!” murmured Pauline.
“Afterwards,” said Carpentaria hurriedly, “I shall come out again and watch the outside of your house. With you inside and me outside, it will be very difficult for anything peculiar to occur without our knowledge.”
And he left her, impressed by her common sense and her self-control, and withal her utter womanliness.
The hall of his own house was dark, and all the rooms of the ground-floor deserted. He mounted to the upper story. Juliette, hearing his footsteps, had come to the door of the study, from whose window she had hailed him, and she stared at him with a fixed and almost stony gaze as he approached. Her figure was silhouetted against the electric light in the study.
“Turn that light out instantly,” he said, with involuntary sternness.
She did not move, and, obsessed by the importance of giving to anyone who might be spying the impression that all the occupants of the house had retired for the night, he pushed past her and turned off the switch.
“Oh, Carlos,” Juliette sighed, “how cruel you are?”
He now saw her indistinctly in the deep gloom of the chamber, and her form seemed pathetic to him, and her sad, despairing voice even more pathetic. He went up to her impulsively and took her hand.
“Juliette,” he said, “can you believe it of me?”
“Miss Dartmouth has spoken to you?” she asked, a glimmer of hope in her tone.