Thus denied, Bayre considered himself justified in further attempts to obtain information by outside means, and after passing an uneasy day on the island, without one glimpse either of Olwen or of his uncle, he returned to the neighbourhood of the château after dark, in the hope that when lighting up time came he might be able to make more discoveries.
The great house looked desolate indeed with only a room lighted here and there, and with whole suites in darkness. The great hall with the long row of high windows, in which he had seen the groping figure which he believed to have been that of his uncle tearing up the floor-boards, had no light glimmering behind the dusky panes.
The room in which Bayre and Monsieur Blaise had been received, and the two apartments through which they had passed on their way thither, were equally in darkness.
But at the corner of the mansion, where the strings of dead Virginia creeper hung over the two narrow barred windows high up in the wall, there was a moving light behind the closed shutters.
Bayre’s attention was instantly attracted. This was the room, this closed room at the end of the house, on the first floor, at the window of which Olwen had seen, or fancied she saw, a woman’s hand thrust out.
Was it a woman who was moving about inside now? It was only the flickering of the light above and between the cracks of the shutters which betrayed the presence of something human within. But slight as the indication was, it was unmistakable, and Bayre felt that he could not rest until he should have discovered whether some one was really imprisoned there.
He stood back on the broad path and calculated his chances of reaching these windows as he had done those of the great hall.
But the walls here were of brick, offering no foothold, and the creeper did not appear to be strong enough to bear his weight.
While he was considering what action to take next, the flickering light became stationary, and remained so for some minutes.
Stepping further back to get a better look at the barred and shuttered windows, and at the narrow slit of light above them, Bayre presently perceived a faint glimmer appearing in like manner above the shutters of the French windows on his right. By the flickering he could see that while the light above the higher windows was still, that behind the French windows was being carried about.