None too soon! From above footsteps were descending; people now passed by; they evidently had been searching the third story. She could hear their low, dissatisfied voices; the last persons to come she at once recognized by their tones.
"You have made a bungling job of it," said Lord Ronsdale. There was a suppressed fierce bitterness in his accents, which, however, in the excitement of the moment, the girl failed to notice.
"He had made up his mind not to be taken alive, my Lord."
"Then--" The other interrupted Mr. Gillett harshly, but she failed to catch more of his words.
"We've not lost him, my Lord," Mr. Gillett spoke again. "If he's not in the house, he's near it, in the garden, and we have every way guarded."
"Every way guarded!" The girl drew her breath; as they disappeared, the striking of the clock caused her to start. One! two! About four hours of darkness, hardly that long remained for him! And yet she would have supposed it later; it had been after one o'clock when she had come to her room.
She became aware of a throbbing in her head, a dull pain, and mechanically seating herself near one of the tables, she put up her hand and started to draw the pins from her hair, but soon desisted. Again she began to think, more clearly this time, more poignantly, of all she had experienced--listened to--that night!
She, a Wray, sprung from a long line of proud, illustrious folk! And he? The breath of the roses outside was wafted upward; her eyes, deep, self-scoffing, rested, without seeing, on a small dark object on a handkerchief on the table. What was it to her if they took him?--What indeed? Her fingers played with the object, closed hard on it. Why should she care if he paid the penalty; he, a self-confessed---
Something fell from the velvet covering in her hand and struck with a musical sound on the hard, polished top. Amid a turmoil of thoughts, she was vaguely aware of it gleaming there on the cold white marble, a small disk--a gold coin. At first it seemed only to catch without interesting her glance; then slowly she took it, as if asking herself how it came there, on her handkerchief, which, she dimly remembered, had been lying on the floor. Some one, of course, must have picked up the handkerchief; but no one had been in the room since she had noticed it except--
Her gaze swung to the window; he, then, had left it. Why? What had she to do with anything that had been his?