But then love stepped in, and pleaded for one last look—one last embrace—before the life-long separation that his crime had doomed him to; what could one day more or less endanger him? And Fate, baffled of his ruin at one hand, now lured him into this worse snare, and he yielded. Hiding himself through the day in the dense thicket that covered the opposite bank of the lake, he had ventured forth at twilight, and by bold manoeuvre and sharpened cunning, had obtained an interview with Kitty. Not one girl in a thousand would have been capable of what he required of her—not one in a thousand would have been willing or trustworthy; but Kitty was as true as steel; her keen wits were equal to the task, and though she only guessed the truth, the rack and torture could not have won it from her. Before she dressed me for the evening, she had dressed Victor in the coarse domino that she had made since twilight for him, out of the black stuff that had lain so many years in the trunk upstairs, forgotten and unused since the last time that the household was in mourning. She had brought about the meeting and recognition between us, and now watched anxiously for us, no doubt, somewhere in the shrubbery.
We were both but too unconscious of the flight of the moments now so precious, when Kitty, with hurried hand, pushed aside the branches of the thicket, and sprang down the ravine.
"Fly, fly for your life, Mr. Victor! You are lost, if you stop for a moment! The officers are at the house; they say a suspicious person has been seen hanging about the grounds, and master has given them permission to search the outhouses and the premises, and they say the police are swarming all around. My dear young lady, let him go! Oh, that I should see you in such trouble!"
"But where shall I go!" murmured Victor, burying his face in his hands. "I see no safety anywhere; the blood-hounds are on my track. It would have been easy to die this morning! Why did I shrink from it then?"
"Kitty!" I gasped, "can you think of no place—nowhere that we can hide him?"
"None! They will search the barn and stables. There's not an inch of ground about the place they'll spare."
"And the house; have they a warrant for that?"
"They have searched the house, they had gone nearly through it before I knew anything about it; I was watching for you outside."
"Then, Kitty, the house is the safest place, if they are out of it; and, if we could only get him there, there is one room where he would be safe!"
Kitty started with a keen look as she caught my meaning.