Then he told swiftly, in a few words, of his experience with the shotgun on this afternoon; threw open the breech of the rifles and pointed out the filed-off firing pin in each. Every weapon, to the last one, had been made thus wholly useless.
The woman's face became the color of plaster, but it remained unmoving, as though every nerve in it were cut.
"I could bear it," she said, "if we had any chance; if we could make a fight of it."
"I think we can do that," replied the Duke; "I have a hunting rifle among my luggage, packed with its ammunition in an ordinary box. That box has not been opened, and I think its contents not suspected. I will see."
And he went swiftly out of the room.
CHAPTER XXI—THE IMPOTENT SPELL
The Duke of Dorset hurried through the deserted corridor and ascended the great stair.
From the moon, sheets of light, entering through the long windows, lay here and there, white, across the steps, and red across that bronze frieze wherein satyrs danced. Although the man hurried, habit for an instant stopped him in the arc of light at the turn of the stair. He lifted his eyes to see that woman, in her costume of old time, descending, but the illusion of it was gone. The thing was now only a lifeless picture hanging in its frame—a sheet of painted canvas from which no disturbing influences emerged. For the fraction of a second surprise held him, then the sound of some one moving in the corridor above caught his ear. Some one walked there, was come now to the stairway, was descending. And the next moment Caroline Childers, coming hurriedly down, saw the Duke of Dorset standing on the step by the window. She stopped instantly, and, like one in terror, put up her hands to her face, her fingers wandering into her hair.