CHAPTER XLIII — BEHIND THE VEIL
“Will you come with me?” said Paul to Maggie. “I will send the servants to put this room to rights.”
Maggie followed him out of the room, and together they went through the passages, calling Etta and looking for her. There was an air of gloom and chilliness in the rooms of the old castle. The outline of the great stones, dimly discernible through the wall-paper, was singularly suggestive of a fortress thinly disguised.
“I suppose,” said Paul, “that Etta lost her nerve.”
“Yes,” answered Maggie doubtfully; “I think it was that.”
Paul went on. He carried a lamp in one steady hand.
“We shall probably find her in one of these rooms,” he said. “It is so easy to lose one’s self among the passages and staircases.”
They passed on through the great smoking-room, with its hunting trophies. The lynx, with its face of Claude de Chauxville, grinned at them darkly from its pedestal.
Half-way down the stairs leading to the side door they met Steinmetz coming hastily up. His face was white and drawn with horror.