“Some one going out! Who can it be at this hour of the night? ’Tis nearly twelve!”
“Quite twelve, I should think,” answered Lora. “That game of lansquenet kept us so long. It was half-past eleven, before we were through with it. Who should be going abroad so late, I wonder?”
Both maidens stood in the embayment of the window—endeavouring, with their glances, to penetrate the darkness outside.
The attempt would have been vain, had the obscurity continued; but, just then, a vivid flash of lightning, shooting athwart the sky, illuminated the lawn; and the park became visible to the utmost limit of its palings.
The window of Marion’s bedchamber opened upon the avenue leading out to the west. Near a spot—to her suggestive of pleasant memories—she now beheld, by the blaze of the electric brand, a sight that added to her uneasiness.
Two horsemen, both heavily cloaked, were riding down the avenue—their backs turned towards the house, as if they had just taken their departure from it. They looked not round. Had they done so at that instant, they might have beheld a tableau capable of attracting them back.
In a wide-bayed window, whose low sill and slight mullions scarce offered concealment to their forms, were two beautiful maidens—lovely virgins—robed in the negligent costume of night—their heads close together, and their nude arms mutually encircling one another’s shoulders, white as the chemisettes draped carelessly over them.
Only for an instant was this provoking tableau exhibited. Sudden as the recession of a dissolving view, or like a picture falling back out of its frame, did it disappear from the sight—leaving in its place only the blank vitreous sheen of the casement.
Abashed by that unexpected exposure—though it was only to the eye of heaven—the chaste maidens had simultaneously receded from the window, before the rude glare that startled them ceased to flicker against the glass.
Sudden, as was their retreating movement, previous to making it, they had recognised the two-cloaked horsemen, who were holding their way along the avenue.