"What if the lion in his rage I meet?
Oft in the dust I see his printed feet."
I gained fresh heart from that trivial diversion of thought, and stood quietly contemplating alternately the hall below and that above (both of which were visible from my place on the intermediate platform; all was still in both of these wide corridors), to make sure of the safety of my enterprise; and now, once more my foot was on the brink of those mysterious stairs which led, I felt, to doom or to liberty. I commenced, very cautiously, to descend them. The study-door at their foot was closed, and all seemed silent within. The murmur of voices, and the remote rattling of china proceeding from the ell behind the hall, encouraged me to believe that on this bitter night the family was concentrated, for greater comfort, in the supper-room.
With my hand on the baluster, pausing at every step, I crept quietly down the stairway; then, as if my feet were suddenly winged with terror, I darted by the study-door, flew lightly over the carpeted hall, and found myself, in another moment, secure within the small enclosed vestibule into which the door of entrance gave. My worst misgivings had never compassed the terrific truth. At this early hour of the evening, not only was the front door locked, but the key had been withdrawn. This was despair.
My knees gave way beneath me, and I sank like a flaccid heap in the corner, against one of the leaves of the small folding-door that divided the arched vestibule from the long entry, and which was secured to the floor by a bolt, while the other one was thrown back. Crouched in the shadow, powerless to move or think, I heard, with inexpressible terror, the door of the study open, and the voice and step of Bainrothe in the hall, approaching me.
Had he heard me? Would he come? Was I betrayed?
I felt my hair rise on my head as these questions rang like a tocsin through my brain, and I think, at that moment, I had a foretaste of the chief agony of death.
They were answered by Bainrothe himself, as he paused midway between the study-door and my place of refuge; and again I breathed—I lived.
"I was mistaken, 'Stasia, it is not he! the wind, probably; and that marble looks so cold—so uninviting—shall not explore it. He has a key, you know, and can come when he likes; for my part, I shall go in to supper while the oysters are hot. Do as you like, though."
"Had we not better wait? You know he is sure to come to-night, bad as the weather is, on account of that affair. It was late when Wentworth notified him."
This was the rejoinder made from within the study, in which I recognized the voice of Mrs. Raymond, clear and shrill.