A mass with three pointed gables, and each storey overhanging the other on beams of timber, rose before him. All was dark in and around it when he approached the door, and, tipsy though he was, he could hear—he thought—the beating of his heart, and for a moment—but a moment only—an emotion of timidity, even of shame, came over him.
'Pshaw!' he exclaimed, with a malediction, and rang the bell.
After some delay and parleying, he was admitted by the drowsy Lenchen, who surveyed him with more annoyance than respect in her visage; but he strode past her without a word, and ascended to Herr Wyburg's sitting-room.
He found that worthy attired in his grotesque Reiter-Diener costume, with his steeple-crowned hat and toledo on the table beside him. He was asleep in an easy-chair, and, after being at a funeral, had drank and smoked himself into a state of partial insensibility.
'I wish to see the Fraulein,' said Sleath to Frau Wyburg, who glanced at him inquiringly.
'She must be asleep,' was the answer.
'I must see and speak with her.'
'Ah, you have found her friends, then?' said Frau Wyburg, with one of her detestable leers.
Sleath made no reply, but, snatching a candle from the table, proceeded at once towards the apartment of Ellinor, with a strange pallor in his face, his bloodshot eyes aflame, and his steps unsteady.
He hesitated a moment, and then turned the handle of the door. It was locked on the inside, and refused to yield.