If she had not been wondering so absorbedly about the bell, she might have heard another and slighter noise much closer at hand. That noise was the sound of a light-footed creature terminating a leap in the centre of her verandah. Just prior to that sound, a man’s figure had been silhouetted against the moonlit sky, as he climbed nimbly and stood an instant on the railing.
CHAPTER XVIII
When Rosamond stepped over the threshold she was conscious of motion in the living room. She stood still and strained her eyes into the dusk of the room. She saw a figure emerge from the shadows and, feeling its way about, arrive at the table behind the settee which supported one of Mr. Hibbert Mearely’s genuine antiques—a bronze vase.
“Ah! What’s this?” he muttered, as his fingers felt about its design.
Rosamond knew now that the impossible had occurred: a burglar had come to Roseborough. Her knees evinced a tendency to fold up and let her shaking body find support upon the floor; but her soul was not a coward. She held her breath and tiptoed to the desk. Noiselessly, she pulled out the drawer and closed her clammy fingers about the pistol. The dining room and quarters beyond provided the best channels of escape, if she must flee, so she crept across the room behind the marauder, just as he moved toward the chimney-piece, where the Louis XV snuff-boxes were set all in a row and ticketed.
“Stop!—stop!” She quavered sternly, pointing the pistol at him.
He wheeled sharply and exclaimed in surprise:
“Oh! Are you up? er—I beg....”
“Who are you?” she demanded, with an access of courage due to the fact that he had not immediately murdered her. She recalled that, in books, one always firmly and at once asked a masked assassin or highwayman to disclose his identity.