Furneaux's eye had duly noted them before, but he had passed them without stopping. Now, after seeing the celts, he went back to them.
To his surprise, Miss Prout did not come with him. She stood looking on the ground, her lower lip somewhat protruded, silent, obviously distrait.
"And these, Miss Prout?" chirped he, "are they of high value?"
She neither answered nor moved.
"Perhaps you haven't studied their history?" ventured Furneaux again.
Now, all at once, she moved to the rack of daggers, and without saying a word, tapped with the fore-finger of her right hand, and kept on tapping, a vacant hole in the rack, though her eyes peered deeply into Furneaux's face. And for the first time Furneaux made acquaintance with the real splendor of her eyes—eyes that lived in sleep, torpid like the dormouse; but when they woke, woke to such a lambency of passion that they fascinated and commanded like the basilisk's.
With eyes so alight she now kept peering at Furneaux, standing tall above him, tapping at the empty hole.
"Oh, I see," muttered Furneaux, his eyes, too, alight like live coals, "there's an article missing here, also—one from the celts, one from the daggers."
"He is innocent!" suddenly cried Hylda Prout, in a tempest of passionate reproach.
"She loves him," thought Furneaux.