I was awakened at five o’clock in the morning by the chiming of a neighboring church bell, and at the same moment, I saw the door to the room noiselessly open, and Lady Arabella Stormont enter, carrying a candle which she shaded with her hand. I involuntarily covered my head up, thinking she had probably come in search of something, and would be alarmed if a man suddenly jumped from the pile of boat-cloaks. But she went to a glass door which led out upon a balcony, with stairs into the garden, and unlocked the door. I had completely forgotten about these stairs, not being familiar with the room, when I climbed up and got in through the window.
Presently I heard a step upon the stairs, and before the person who was coming had time to knock, Lady Arabella opened the door. The rosy dawn of a clear June morning made it light outside, but inside the room it was quite dark, except for the candle carried by Lady Arabella.
A man entered, and as soon as he was in the room, she noiselessly locked the door, and, unseen by him, put the key in her pocket.
As he turned, and the candlelight fell upon his face, I saw it was Philip Overton. Amazement was pictured in his face, and in his voice, too, when he spoke.
“I was sent for in haste, by Sir Peter, just now,” he said, with some confusion.
At which Lady Arabella laughed, as if it were a very good joke that he should find her instead of Sir Peter. Meanwhile, my own chaos of mind prevented me from understanding fully what they were saying; but I gathered that Lady Arabella had devised some trick, in which she had freely used Sir Peter Hawkshaw’s name to get Overton there in that manner and in that room. Sir Peter was such a very odd fish that no one was surprised at what he did. It was no use striving not to listen,—they were not five feet from me,—and I lay there in terror, realizing that I was in a very dangerous position. I soon discovered that Overton’s reputation for lately-acquired Methodistical piety had not done away with a very hot temper. He was enraged, as only a man can be who is entrapped, and demanded at once of Lady Arabella to be let out of the glass door, when he found it locked. She refused to tell him where the key was, and he threatened to break the glass and escape that way.
“Do it then, if you wish,” she cried, “and rouse the house and the neighborhood, and ruin me if you will. But before you do it, read this, and then know what Arabella Stormont can do for the man she loves!”
She thrust a letter into his hand, and, slipping out of the door to the corridor, as swiftly and silently as a swallow in its flight, she locked it after her; Overton was a prisoner in Sir Peter’s room. He tore the letter open, read the few lines it contained, and then threw it down with an oath. The next minute he caught sight of me; in my surprise I had forgotten all my precautions, and had half arisen.
“You hound!” he said. “Are you in this infernal plot?” And he kicked the boat-cloaks off me.
“I am not,” said I coolly, recalled to myself by the term he had used toward me; “and neither am I a hound. You will kindly remember to account to me for that expression, Captain Overton.”