Audrey, however, was restless, ill at ease, full of vain longings for another sight of her husband’s face, and unable to sleep for the dreams in which she saw again, as she had seen that afternoon, the pitiful, white, drawn features, the sad, sunken eyes, or else the transformed, flushed countenance and brilliant, almost feverish eyes which had looked into hers and told her more plainly than he could with his lips that he had loved her and longed for her as she had for him.
She walked up and down her room, in soft-soled slippers that made no noise, wrapping her dressing-gown tightly round her—for she felt chilly and the night air was cold—hoping to tire herself out, to be able to forget her misery and her anxiety for a time in sound sleep.
And as she walked, she fancied that she heard, very faintly and as if muffled by distance, the sound of an altercation of some sort. She stopped, went closer to her locked door, and listened. She was sure, quite sure that she heard men’s voices, angry, excited, violently vociferous.
She gently turned the key, then the handle, and peeped out.
She was shocked to see that one of the men-servants, the very Barnard whom she had caught following her that day, was quietly sitting on the wide ledge, which made a fairly good seat, of the window at the extreme north end of the corridor.
This corridor ran the whole length of the main building of the house, with bedrooms on one side, and a row of tall, deep-set windows on the other. These windows overlooked the courtyard, and the billiard-room, an annexe to the main building and at right angles with it, which was kept shut up by the Duchess de Vicenza’s order.
In consequence of the ugliness of the outlook the lower part of all these windows was filled in with painted glass, and any eyes less sharp than those of Audrey might have failed to descry the servant in the corner, leaning back as he was against the darkened panes.
Perhaps even Audrey might have failed to see him if she had not had her attention attracted by a deep-drawn breath, almost a snore, which announced that the watcher was asleep.
Waking suddenly to the fact that this man, who had been a spy by day, was a spy by night also, Audrey left her door ajar, in order to make as little noise as possible, and gliding along the corridor in the direction of the front staircase, ran quickly down into the hall, and listened again.
She heard the sound of angry voices intermittently as she went; and divining that they proceeded from the side of the house nearest to the road, which was shut out by a high wall, she drew back the bolts of the front-door, and slipped out into the covered passage which led thence to the outer door in the wall.