Throwing her gown about her, she snatched the electric torch from the drawer of her dressing-table and made her way to the door. Impenetrable darkness greeted her as before, but it seemed to her overwrought fancy that a shuddering tension filled the air and the ticking of the tall clock beat like a tocsin upon her brain.
As one in a trance she moved mechanically to the stairs and down, the thread of light which played from her hand guiding her cautious footsteps. The doors of the library and drawing-room were closed, but that of the dining-room was opened wide and a frigid draft blew through it, whipping the gown about her bare ankles.
Betty flashed her light upon the aperture and the outline of the heavily carved dining table leaped into view, while all about it on the floor lay fragments of something which scintillated in the shaft of radiance like scattered diamonds.
Slowly she approached the door, the darting rays from her torch piercing the sinister darkness, the very breath hushed in her throat. On the threshold she paused and stood transfixed.
The dining table had been slewed to one side, chairs were overturned, draperies pulled from their rings and the great glass punch bowl lay shattered on the floor.
But it was not upon these signs of violence that her eyes were fastened in a glaze of horror. A man lay stretched before the hearth with upturned face and arms flung wide, a man whose eyes stared with tragic vacuity and from whose breast a sluggish crimson stream had flowed to form a spreading pool upon the rug.
For a long minute the girl stood staring with eyes as fixed as those of the dead. She opened her lips, but no sound issued from them to raise an alarm or summon aid. Instead she lifted her hands jerkily to her throat as if struggling to draw breath, and turning, fled silently for her very life up the stairs.
CHAPTER III.
The Velvet Glove.
Betty was seated before her mirror, gazing somewhat doubtfully from the small round box of rouge in her hand to her wan reflection. Dare she hope successfully to conceal the ravages of a sleepless, tortured night? Her cheeks and very lips were blanched and her eyes sunken and heavily circled. Only the birthmark, like a scarlet stain, glowed sullenly and served but to accentuate her pallor. It were better by far that her employer's keen eyes should note a condition which she could attribute to illness than that her effort to conceal it would be so palpable as to invite suspicion of a graver nature.