"It is not the first time you have seen this velvet and its parent fabric," said Lorelie.
Approaching a mirror she held the bow against the neck-band of her dress.
"I shall wear this bow to-night. True, it does not look very pretty, yet it may serve as a talisman, and——"
But on looking up she found that Ivar was gone. The velvet dropped to the carpet, and she clasped her hands.
"They mean it," she murmured. "I can read it in Ivar's guilty manner—half-resolve, half-fear: letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would.' My God! But I will go through with it. I will put their base courage to the test."
Her first fears had vanished, leaving her hard and firm as steel. The spirit that loves danger for its own sake, the spirit derived from her Corsican ancestors, began to reawake in the breast of their nineteenth-century descendant.
At six in the evening Lorelie, who had spent the afternoon in arranging her plan of action, stole quietly to her bedroom, having told the butler she would not come down to dinner.
"I must sleep," she murmured, "that my faculties may be fresh and unimpaired for to-night's work."
Her first care was to lock and bolt the door that opened upon the corridor, and next that communicating with Ivar's bedroom. She paid considerable attention to these doors, as well as to the fastenings of the windows. A traveller putting up for the night at some lonely and suspicious hostelry could not have shown more caution. Thus secured from intrusion she laid herself down, dressed as she was, upon the bed. But fully two hours elapsed ere she succeeded in falling asleep.