Vera checked an impulse to wake her. In that miserable household sleep was the most blessed of all luxuries. Why, then, should Marion be disturbed? Doubtless she had come there to protect and, doubtless the girl would know all about it in the morning.
"I will not wake her," Vera murmured.
But she could not sleep herself. The splitting, blinding headache was very much in evidence just now. Vera felt that she would give anything for a glass of cold spring water. She poured out that in her own bottle, but it was flat and tepid.
She would go down into the stone-flagged outer kitchen, where the pump was, and get some fresh. In any case, she had not the least idea of going to bed again. Vera partly dressed herself, doing up her hair in a big shining knot, and then, in slippered feet, crept down to the kitchen. She had no need of a light—there was already enough to show the way.
How cool and refreshing the water was! She drank a glass and then laved her face in the crystal fluid. All headache was gone by this time, though Vera had a curious trembling of her lower limbs that she could not account for.
She opened a side door leading into a green quadrangle, and from there made her way to the terrace. For a few minutes she stood in a dark angle facing the house, just picked out, as it was, from the gloom. Along the dim corridor some one was advancing with a light.
What could it mean? What was going on? Vera crouched close into the dark corner. She had an idea that she was going to witness something.
The light in the corridor stopped and grew brighter. From the black shadow of the house a human figure crept out and slid along the terrace to a spot where it was just possible for a man of strong courage and cool head to make his way down to the beach at low tide. At high water the sea swept the foot of the cliff.
Vera strained her eyes to make out the figure. It passed so close to her that she might have touched the hem of the white diaphanous garment about it; a faint, sour kind of perfume was in the air. These swiftly flying feet made not the slightest noise. Vera guessed at once that this was one of the Orientals whom she and Geoffrey had seen along the cliffs on a memorable occasion.
She was not far wrong. If not the same, they belonged to the same noisome band. Almost before Vera could recover from her surprise another figure followed.