O, shut me nightly in a charnel house,
O’er covered quite with dead men’s rattling bones,
With reeking shanks, and yellow, chapless skulls;
Or bid me go into a new-made grave
And hide me with a dead man in his shroud—
Things that to hear them told have made me tremble—
And I will do them without fear or doubt
To live unstained. Shakespeare.
“I beg your pardon for this sudden intrusion, but—I am suffering great—the greatest anxiety!” he began, casting his eyes around the room. “My ward has been missing since yesterday. Have you seen—have you heard——”
“She is safe, Colonel de Crespigney. She is quite safe. She is here,” answered Dame Lindsay, leading the visitor around the headboard of the bed, that had hitherto hidden the recumbent girl from his sight.