“My hands are quite dusty,” said Mr. Eyrle, with a smile as he took the key. Even so do children smile as they dance on the brink of a precipice hidden by flowers.
He opened it, and she left her seat at his expressed wish.
“You had better look through these yourself, Lady Alden, as Ronald considered them private.”
She took the papers and looked carefully.
“They seem to be certificates of a different kind. The papers are not here, Kenelm.”
He was about to close the box, when quite suddenly she touched a secret spring, and a drawer flew open.
Flew open—oh, Heaven!—and there in the midst of papers lay a long, slender dagger, rusted with human blood!
They looked at it with horror-stricken eyes, Kenelm’s face growing white and rigid.
“My God!” he cried at last, in a terrible voice. “What is this?”
She, bending over it, looked like one suddenly smitten with death. Her eyes dilated; they fell upon a small square packet, and she, unperceived by him, covered it with an open sheet of paper and drew it away so slowly and so carefully that he did not perceive it—slowly, steadily until, with cunning right hand, she had hidden it in the pocket of her dress; and then she gave a great cry that was a sort of despair.