“Ada!” again cried Sir Francis, “Ada! If you are concealed within, hearing of my voice, be assured it is a friend who addresses you.”
A low gasping sob burst from Ada, and Gray again hissed in her ear,—
“A word, and you die. You are a corpse if you speak; and all hope of seeing Albert Seyton in this world will be past!”
“Ada!” again cried Sir Francis. “Speak if you be here. A friend addresses you, I am Sir Francis Hartleton, the magistrate.”
Ada made a slight movement and Gray pressed her quite back with the violence with which he held the pistol against her temple.
There was a dead silence now. Sir Francis said no more, Ada’s hope was past. Still, however, Gray stood close to her with the pistol; and as the murderer and the innocent Ada remained thus strangely situated, it would have been difficult to say which suffered the most mental agony of the two. Ada to know that relief had been so near without the power to grasp at it—or Gray to know that one word from her would have consigned him to a prison, from whence he would never have emerged but to ascend the scaffold to die a death of ignominy and shame.
CHAPTER XLV.
The Lonely Watcher.—Gray’s Cunning.—The Cupboard on the Stairs.
Notwithstanding the search which Sir Francis Hartleton had made—a search that satisfied him that Ada had been removed from Forest’s house by the cunning of Gray—he could not divest himself of the idea that one or both might return to the old mansion, if for no other purpose than to remove some of the articles, which in the course of his researches he had found in various closets and cupboards, into which they had been hastily thrust by Jacob Gray.
In case such a thing should be, after some consideration, he resolved to have one of his men there for several days, and he accordingly turned to him who had been guarding the door, and said,—