If the Colonel was still there, the presence of the carriage no doubt made him keep concealed.
Presently other sounds reached me. Some one unfastened the windows of the room below and flung them wide open. A man went out and I heard his feet grate on the gravel.
"It's no use. He's dead drunk. We may as well——"
It was Gustav's voice, and the rest of the words were lost to me, for I shrank back nervously.
Then an instinctive impulse caused me to lay my ear to the ground and listen for the window to be shut. I heard it closed; but there was no sound of the bolt being shot.
Dark as it was and alone though I was in the room, I know that I turned deathly white at the possible reason for this which flashed upon me in that moment; and when I passed my hand across my forehead the beads of perspiration stood thick upon it. I felt sick and dazed with the horror that was born of that thought; and my limbs were heavy as I dragged them back across the room to the bed and sat there, listening intently for the sounds of Count Gustav's departure, and ready to rush downstairs the instant he had gone.
There was no longer any need for me to stare vaguely out into the garden. I knew now that the watcher was there, and why he was there. I had guessed the secret of that noisily opened window, of the loudly spoken words, and the closed but unbolted casement.
The carriage went at last, after I had heard Count Gustav's voice in the hall below speaking to some one who answered in a lower and indistinct tone.
While the two were still speaking, I unlocked my door softly and crept out to the head of the stairs; and even as the front door was shut by James Perry and the carriage started, I ran down.
"Go in there at once, James, fasten the bolt of the big window, and if the blind is up, draw it down. Quick, at once," I told him, and followed him into the room.