Lorenzo could not but feel some alarm when his eyes fell upon those tall forms, for he was conscious that he was treading on forbidden ground, where, to be found without the ring—the usual passport—was instant death. Such was the rigour of the discipline in which alone suspicion could hope to find security.
It is true he was not within the circle of the captain’s quarters, but, nevertheless, his being discovered in the passage at that time of night, and in such guise, would lead to consequences equally as fatal, as if he had trespassed on interdicted ground.
His careful concealment of his person, and the change of his boots, would have worn such an aspect of conspiracy in the eyes of his superior, that nothing could have been strong enough to blot out the distrust which the latter would ever afterwards entertain of him, if even the consideration of his services and old friendship should have proved strong enough to induce the captain to spare his life.
The thoughts rushed in an instant on the officer as he stood for a moment looking at the erect and steady sentinel at the end of the passage before him.
They fell on him with all the weight and dreadful truthfulness which they possessed. He remained for a moment irresolute, but at length the daring spirit which his mode of life had fostered, and that indescribable feeling people call love, but which is as incomprehensible as it is omnipotent in its influence, nerved him against the danger which he apprehended, and he took two or three steps forwards with the same caution with which he had come into the passage. But he had gone only a few steps when he saw that the attention of the sentinel was drawn in his direction. The latter had changed his straightforward look and was seemingly endeavouring to discover some object which had attracted his notice up the passage.
Lorenzo stood—his worst fears he thought were about to be realized. He saw at once the certainty of his being detected, and the consequences of that pressed on his mind.
The thought, too, which always afflicts ingenuous minds, when they are conscious that they are not culpable of an offence from which they instinctively recoil with horror, but with which circumstances conspire to charge them, fell heavily and miserably upon him.
The most desperately situated always hope—there is a hope almost in despondency itself; Lorenzo still hoped, in spite of the peril before him, that he would escape discovery. He knew that he could not be seen by the sentinel in the darkness of the passage, and expected that the latter would turn away, when he found that nothing was to be seen. Lorenzo, therefore, remained quietly where he was. The sentinel continued to gaze earnestly up the passage, and at last came out of his niche, and began to walk straightway towards Lorenzo.
“I am lost,” the officer said to himself, and at once made up his mind to stay where he was and surrender to the sentinel. The man came towards him, but there was such indecision in his walk, that the officer could not fail to perceive, at once, that the man on duty was only taking a walk to see if there really was any one in the passage, without being actually certain of his presence.
“There may be a chance of escape, yet,” he said to himself, and drew himself closely up against the side of the passage.