More and more the solitude and the silence troubled her. The profound silence. A solitude so abnormal that Dorothy reached the point of believing herself to be no longer alone. Some one was watching. Men were following her as she went. It seemed to her that she was exposed to all menaces, that the barrels of guns were leveled at her, that she was about to fall into the trap which her enemy had laid.
The impression was so strong that Dorothy, who knew her nature and the correctness of her presentiments, reckoned it a certainty resting on irrefutable proofs. She even knew where the ambush was awaiting her. They had guessed that her instinct, her calculations, that all the circumstances of the drama, would bring her back to the tower; and there they were awaiting her.
She stopped at the entrance of the vault. On the opposite side, above the steps which descended into the immense nave of the donjon, her enemies must be posted. Let her make a few more steps and they would capture her.
She stood quite still. She no longer doubted that Maître Delarue had been taken, and that, yielding to threats, he had disclosed the fact that the second envelope was in her hands, that second envelope without which the diamonds of the Marquis de Beaugreval would never be discovered.
A minute or two passed. No single indication allowed her to believe in the actual presence of the enemies she imagined. But the mere logic of the events demanded that they should be there. She must then act as if they were there.
By one of those imperceptible movements which seemed to have no object, without letting anything in her attitude awake the suspicion in her invisible enemies that she was accomplishing a definite action, she managed to open her purse and extract the envelope. She crumpled it up and reduced it to a tiny ball.
Then, letting her arm hang down, she went some steps into the vault.
Behind her, violently, with a loud crash, something fell down. It was the old feudal portcullis, which fell from above, came grating down its grooves, and blocked the entrance with its heavy trellis-work of massive wood.