“That is mine, Crailey Gray!”
She sprang to her feet, immeasurably startled, one hand clutching the back of her chair, the other tremulously pressed to her cheek, convinced that her father had stooped over her and shouted the sentence in her ear. For it was his voice, and the house rang with the words; all the rooms, halls, and even the walls, seemed still murmurous with the sudden sound, like the tingling of a bell after it had been struck. And yet—everything was quiet.
She pressed her fingers to her forehead, trying to untangle the maze of dreams which had evolved this shock for her, the sudden clamor in her father's voice of a name she hated and hoped never to hear again, a name she was trying to forget. But as she was unable to trace anything which had led to it, there remained only the conclusion that her nerves were not what they should be. The vapors having become obsolete for young ladies as an explanation for all unpleasant sensations, they were instructed to have “nerves.” This was Miss Betty's first consciousness of her own, and, desiring no greater acquaintance with them, she told herself it was unwholesome to fall asleep in a chair by an open window when the night was as sad as she.
Turning to a chair in front of the small oval mirror of her bureau, she unclasped the brooch which held her lace collar, and, seating herself, began to unfasten her hair. Suddenly she paused, her uplifted arms falling mechanically to her sides.
Someone was coming through the long hall with a soft, almost inaudible step, a step which was not her father's. She knew at once, with instinctive certainty, that it was not he. Nor was it Nelson, who would have shuffled; nor could it be the vain Mamie, nor one of the other servants, for they did not sleep in the house. It was a step more like a woman's, though certainly it was not Mrs. Tanberry's.
Betty rose, took a candle, and stood silent for a moment, the heavy tresses of her hair, half-unloosed, falling upon her neck and left shoulder like the folds of a dark drapery.
At the slight rustle of her rising, the steps ceased instantly. Her heart set up a wild beating and the candle shook in her hand. But she was brave and young, and, following an irresistible impulse, she ran across the room, flung open the door, and threw the light of the candle into the hall, holding it at arm's length before her.
She came almost face to face with Crailey Gray.
The blood went from his cheeks as a swallow flies down from a roof; he started back against the opposite wall with a stifled groan, while she stared at him blankly, and grew as deathly pale as he.
He was a man of great resource in all emergencies which required a quick tongue, but, for the moment, this was beyond him. He felt himself lost, toppling backward into an abyss, and the uselessness of his destruction made him physically sick. For he need not have been there; he had not wished to come; he had well counted the danger to himself, and this one time in his life had gone to the cupola-room out of good-nature. But Bareaud had been obstinate and Crailey had come away alone, hoping that Jefferson might follow. And here he was, poor trapped rat, convicted and ruined because of a good action! At last he knew consistency to be a jewel, and that a greedy boy should never give a crust; that a fool should stick to his folly, a villain to his deviltry, and each hold his own; for the man who thrusts a good deed into a life of lies is wound about with perilous passes, and in his devious ways a thousand unexpected damnations spring.