There was only one door giving into the house that side, the door which led to the kitchen, and which was always kept locked. Only unlocked, indeed, when Lily herself went into the yard to the outhouse to have her bath each morning. That door led only into the yard, it was not used as a back door, as it would have been in England.
Lily fell asleep again; and she could not have told you whether it was a few moments or an hour, later, that she was awakened, this time by the loud, unmistakable sound of the gate in the yard below being swung to.
What an extraordinary thing! She jumped out of bed. This time she rushed to the window, and craned her head out to see in the light misty haze of earliest dawn that the gate was shut now, and that everything below looked as it always did.
It must have been a human being, not an animal, which had penetrated into the yard during the night.
She pulled the curtains together and fell asleep again, till she heard Cristina’s light step in the passage. Then it wasn’t night any more, it was early morning now? Why did poor Cristina get up so early—perhaps to go to the first Mass up at the chapel? There was a priest staying near there who had the strange habit of saying Mass at five o’clock. Cristina often got up to attend it. Lily always knew, for the old woman looked so dreadfully tired on the days when she had done this.
CHAPTER XXIV
There are moments in life, not, alas! very many in number, when everything about us takes on a wonderful radiance, and when all that happens seems merged in joy.
All through Lily’s curious, disturbed night there had shone the golden flame of her love for Angus Stuart, and of his love for her. It was that miracle which filled the whole of her being and absorbed all her thoughts. When she got up the next morning she scarcely remembered that poor Cousin Rosa was dead, and that she was now a very rich young woman.
“The bath is quite ready,” said Cristina eagerly. “And I have already emptied some buckets of hot water in it for Mademoiselle.”
With her hand on the key of the door which led into the little yard, Lily turned round: “Oh, Cristina, something so strange happened in the night. I’m quite sure that the big gate outside here was opened, and that someone came in. I heard such curious noises on two separate occasions, but though I looked out of the window it was too dark for me to see anything.”