Here it was, however, that Rees had resolved to make a search, the thoroughness of which should be complete. At last, on the fifth evening of his labors, when he had dug deep down in the piled-up earth, until the last of the daylight had faded out of the sky, he felt the floor tremble under his feet.
He was by this time in utter darkness, his spade working mechanically in the hard earth.
He stopped, shivering from head to foot, cold from excitement and an instinct of mad joy. A hoarse shout escaped his lips in spite of himself.
The next moment it turned to a low-breathed exclamation of savage impatience. For a girl’s voice called to him from the outer court, and in another minute the faint light which came through the doorway was blocked by her figure. It was Lady Marion Cenarth.
“What are you doing here, Rees Pennant,” she asked sharply.
CHAPTER VII.
On hearing Lady Marion’s voice, Rees felt his heart stand still. It was by this time quite dark in the cavernous chamber, so that he could only guess that she must have been watching, unseen by him, for an hour or more. He had a few moments to consider what he should do, for at the first sound of her voice he had stepped back hastily into the black shadow of one of the corners of the chamber, from whence he could observe her figure as long as she remained with her back to the faint light at the entrance.
“I know you are here, Rees. What are you doing?” she repeated.
And she passed with careful feet through the doorway, and began to advance towards the middle of the vaulted room.
Rees, interrupted thus, as he believed, on the brink of an important discovery, and afraid every moment that Lady Marion’s feet would touch the iron grating he had just partly unearthed, felt that he could have killed her. But there was no time to be lost in explosions of resentment. The intruder had to be treated with, and at once. Throwing himself on his hands and knees, he crept hastily towards the doorway by which she had entered, while the slight noise he made in gliding over the rocky floor and the smooth-trodden earth which had in course of time accumulated over great part of it, was drowned by her own constant and excited calls to him by name. He slipped through the opening quickly, and ran up the rickety wooden steps which now connected these lower chambers of the ruins with those above.