"I know not. If we must brave it out we must; but there is a chance yet. Do you stay here, and meet Bligh as he comes back; you can be strolling along the cross path. Have you a cigar? No; you are in dinner-dress, of course. Stay; you have an overcoat on; search the pockets. Yes, yes; what luck! Here's a cigar-case, and your light-box hangs to your chain,--I'll never call it vulgar again,--light a cigar at once, and contrive to show the light when you hear them. I will go to the house. You left the side window open, did you not?"
"Yes, yes." His agitation was increasing; hers was subsiding.
"If I can get into the house unseen, all is right. I can pass through my own rooms into Hammond's. Send there for me if all is safe; the servants think I am there."
She turned away to leave him; but he caught her in his arms, and said in a tone of agony,
"Laura! Laura! if I have exposed you to danger--if--"
"Hush!" she said, disengaging herself; "you have not exposed me to danger any more than I have exposed myself; but don't talk of this as a hopeless scrape until we know that there is no way out of it." She was out of sight in an instant.
Mademoiselle Marcelline sat at the foot of Mr. Hammond's bed without the least impatience. She did not fidget, she did not look at the clock, she did not doze. The time passed apparently to her perfect satisfaction. The invalid slept on very peacefully, and the whole scene wore an eminently comfortable aspect. At length her acute ears discerned a light footfall at the end of the corridor, and then she heard the handle of Mrs. Hammond's dressing-room door gently turned--in vain. Then the footstep came on, and another door-handle was turned, equally in vain.
Mademoiselle Marcelline smiled. "It would have been so convenient for madame to have hung her cloak up and smoothed her hair before monsieur should see her, after madame's promenade in the clear of the moon," thought Mademoiselle Marcelline. "What a pity that those tiresome doors should unhappily be locked! What a sorrowful accident!"
The door opened, and Laura looked cautiously into the room. All was as she had left it; the sleeping face of her husband was turned towards her. The pathetic unconsciousness of sleep was upon it; she did not heed the pathos, but the unconsciousness was convenient. The minutest change that would have intimated that any one had entered the room would not have escaped her notice, but there was no such thing. She came in, and softly closed the heavy perfectly-hung door; she made a few steps forward, uttered a deep sigh of relief, and said in an involuntary whisper, "What a risk, and what an escape!"
Her heavy cloak hung upon her; she pushed back the hood, and her chestnut hair, in wild disorder, shone with red gleams in the firelight. She lifted her white hands and snatched impatiently at the tasseled cord which held the garment at the throat; and Mademoiselle Marcelline emerged from the shadow of the bed-curtains, and with perfect propriety and an air of entire respect requested that madame would permit her to remove the cloak which was so heavy, and also madame's boots, which must be damp, for the promenade of evening had inconveniences.