A steep descent of stone steps now yawned in front of them. With her left hand Lorelie drew her dainty skirts around her, and glanced in disgust at the black slimy ooze and the patches of fungous growth.
"These stairs look slippery," she murmured.
"A former lord of Ormsby broke his neck down these very steps," remarked the earl.
"I have no wish to imitate his feat," said Lorelie, drawing back a little. "Do you go first. If I slip I shall be but a light weight, whereas if you should fall upon me," she added, with a shrug of her shoulders, "there is no knowing what might happen."
The earl gave her a suspicious look as if detecting a hidden meaning in her words: then, compliant with her wish, he led the way down the steps. Lorelie came last, feeling more at ease in being at the rear.
The stairs terminated in the flagged flooring of another long passage, at the end of which was the crypt.
As Lorelie entered she could not repress a shiver, the atmosphere of the place striking her senses with a damp chilling effect.
Ivar, by aid of the light he had carried, proceeded to kindle the lamp pendent from the roof, and every object in the chamber became clearly visible.
At a glance Lorelie took in the whole scene—the octagonal crypt, the black velvet curtains draping the alcoves, the massive oak table, and the four antique carved chairs: everything just as Godfrey had described it.
As her eye fell upon the silver lace edging the lower end of a curtain adjacent to the door, her face expressed satisfaction, a satisfaction that became instantly lost in a very different feeling: for there, on the floor by one of the alcoves, was a chest of cypress wood, an object she readily identified as the reliquary that had figured so conspicuously in Godfrey's narration. The lid stood erect and she noticed that the contents consisted of a whitish powder.