The face itself was very white, the eyes glistened, the lips twitched nervously, and there was about her an atmosphere of terror.
She made it herself, this beautiful woman walking up and down a beautiful room; but fear there was in that quiet place, and it did not come in there from the open windows, but radiated out from a guilty mind and a wildly pulsating heart. Every now and again, as she walked up and down, Alice Attwill moistened her lips with her tongue and glanced at the travelling-clock covered with red leather which stood upon the mantlepiece.
At last she stopped with one thoughtful glance at the clock.
"It'll be all right now," she said to herself. "I am sure they must be beginning to suspect me. Fool that I was! Why, every novel and almost every play has this question of the blotting-book in it. It is such a simple device, and yet in real life how often it does happen! Here am I confronted with the worst crisis in my whole life, simply because I forgot the blotting-book."
Clenching her teeth she quietly left the room, descended the wide Georgian stairs into the hall, and opened the door of the drawing-room.
She peered cautiously into the room, now lit up by clusters of electric lights.
Satisfied that no one was there, she closed the door very quietly, and with silent, cat-like steps walked up to the writing-table.
Again, as her hand fell upon the blotting-book, she looked round in an agony of apprehension. Then, opening it hurriedly, she searched among the leaves with a puzzled brow.
Some of the leaves were heavily blotted and no writing upon them was wholly distinguishable, while others only bore a few well-defined imprints.
Her slender, trembling fingers turned over the leaves in an agony of anxiety, but—either she was too agitated or too inexperienced—she was unable to find what she sought.