"Who can it be?" again asked the Madam, while a thousand vague suspicions floated through her brain.
"Who can it be?" echoed Corkins, shaking like a dry leaf in the wind.
Here let us leave them awhile in their perplexity, while we retrace our steps, and take up again the adventures of Barnhurst and Dermoyne. We left them in the dimly-lighted bed-chamber, at the moment when the faithful wife, awaking from her slumber, welcomed the return of her husband in these words,—"Husband! have you come at last? I have waited for you so long!"
"Husband!" said the wife, awaking from her sleep, and stretching forth her arms, "have you come at last? I have waited for you so long!"
"Dearest, I was detained by an unexpected circumstance," answered Barnhurst, and first turning to Dermoyne with an imploring gesture, he approached the bed, and kissed his wife and sleeping child. Then back to Dermoyne again with a stealthy step,—"Take your revenge!" he whispered; "advance, and tell everything to my wife."
Dermoyne's face showed the contest of opposing emotions; now clouded with a hatred as remorseless as death, now touched with something like pity. At a rapid glance he surveyed the face of the trembling culprit,—the boy sleeping on his couch,—the mother resting on the bed, with her babe upon her bent arm,—and then uttered in a whisper, a single word,—"Come!"
He led Barnhurst over the threshold, out upon the landing, and carefully closed the door of the bed-chamber.
"Now, sir," he whispered, fixing his stern gaze upon Barnhurst's face, which was lighted by the rays of the lamp in the hall below,—"what have you to propose?"
Barnhurst's blonde visage was corpse-like in its pallor.
"Nothing," he said, folding his arms with the air of a man who has lost all hope, and made up his mind to the worst. "I am in your power."