Three or four officers of the French police, in their neat uniform, stood in the hallway without.
"Enter, gentlemen," he said, courteously, though there was a tone of surprise in his voice that they could not mistake.
Carl Muller, too, though he did not speak, rose from his seat and expressed his amazement by his manner.
The officers filed into the room gravely, closing the door after them. Then the foremost one advanced, with an open paper in his hand, and laid his hand firmly but respectfully on Leslie Dane's arm.
"Monsieur Dane," he said, in clear, incisive tones that fell like a thunder-clap on the hearing of the two artists—"Monsieur Dane, I arrest you for the willful murder of Francis Arnold at his home in America three years ago!"
[CHAPTER XXX.]
"Quelle horreur, Felise! that was a shocking denouement to-night. We tremble on the brink of a volcano."
Mrs. Arnold and her daughter were rolling homeward in their luxurious carriage from the masquerade ball at Colonel Carlyle's chateau, and the elder lady's remark was uttered in a tone of trepidation and terror.
But Felise leaning back in her corner among the silken cushions in the picturesque costume of a fortune-teller, only laughed at her terror—a low and fiendish laugh that expressed unqualified satisfaction.