Going into the small landing at the foot of the staircase, they close the door carefully behind them, and then, Captain Ringwood producing some matches, they light the two lamps and go swiftly, with anxiously beating hearts, up the stairs.
The second door is reached, and now nothing remains but to mount the last flight of steps and open the fatal door.
Their hearts at this trying moment almost fail them. They look into one another's blanched faces, and look there in vain for hope. At last Ringwood, touching Ethel's arm, says, in a whisper—
"Come, have courage—all may yet be well!"
He moves toward the stone steps, and they follow him. Quickly mounting them, he lays his hand upon the door, and, afraid to give them any more time for reflection or dread of what may yet be in store for them, throws it open.
At first the feeble light from their lamps fails to penetrate the darkness of the gloomy apartment. At the cursory glance, such as they at first cast round the room, it appears to be empty. Their hearts sink within them. Have they indeed hoped in vain!
Dora is crying bitterly; Ethel, with her eyes fixed upon Ringwood, is reading her own disappointment in his face, when suddenly a piercing cry from Florence wakes the echoes round them.
She has darted forward, and is kneeling over something that even now is only barely discernible to the others as they come nearer to it. It looks like a bundle of clothes, but, as they stoop over it, they, too, can see that it is in reality a human body, and apparently rigid in death.
But the shriek that has sprung from the very soul of Florence has reached some still living fibers in the brain of this forlorn creature. Slowly and with difficulty he raises his head, and opens a pair of fast-glazing eyes. Mechanically his glance falls upon Florence. His lips move; a melancholy smile struggles to show itself upon his parched and blackened lips.
"Florence," he rather sighs than says, and falls back, to all appearance, dead.