With what pride and delight and thankfulness did he regard her! Josephine had been wrong, quite wrong in supposing her rival too feeble to act. In her anxiety, unable to tear herself away in her fear for his safety, mastering her exhaustion and her fear for herself, she must have lurked in the wood in which the lighthouse stood, and waited for the night.
And now she was attempting the impossible to save the man who had so cruelly betrayed her.
Once more Leonard awoke. But fortunately she was directly behind him. Once more he fell asleep and she moved noiselessly forward till she stood beside him, reached forward, and picked up Josephine’s dagger which lay on the chair which was to act as alarm and add by its jingle to the noise of its fall. Was she going to strike?
Ralph was terrified. Now that the light of the candle clearly illuminated her face, it seemed to him to be set in a cold ferocity. But their eyes met, and she obeyed the unspoken bidding of his will. She did not strike. Ralph bent forward a little so that the rope which ran through the back of the chair hung slack. Beaumagnan, seeing what he would be at, bent forward too.
Then slowly, with a steady hand, she cut the rope.
As luck had it, their enemy did not wake. Had he done so, she would assuredly have killed him. Her eyes, still holding that threat of death, never left him. She bent down, her hand fumbled about for Ralph’s bonds. She freed his wrists.
He whispered: “Give me the knife.”
She handed it to him. But a hand was quicker than his. Beaumagnan who for hours had also been patiently at work, loosening his bonds, snatched the knife from her.
Furious, Ralph gripped his arm. If Beaumagnan loosed himself and got away before he did, farewell all hope of seizing the treasure. There was a desperate struggle, in which either of them put forth all his strength, telling himself that the least noise would wake Leonard.
Clarice, trembling with fear, sank to her knees, quite as much in order not to fall to the ground as to beseech them.