She was calm, but a curious pulse was beating in her ears and deadening her sense of hearing. Through it she could swear that strange noises were in the air, which were entirely foreign to any that could be caused within the house.
The bounding pulse still beat in her ears, and she stood intently waiting.
What it was she knew not, which smote her whole being into intensity—her hair bristled.
There it was again—through the thick shutter and massive window—the deep breathing of a man who has been hard at work, and stops his operations to listen.
Could it be that her enemy was at the window?
Margaret shrank back; she had been standing in profile, not two feet from the window, and her ear had caught the indistinct sounds so clearly that she was able to trace them immediately to their cause.
A man was in the balcony outside her window, and he was listening to know whether she was sleeping or waking. Perhaps a burglar? No.
Mortlake was there to retrace his false step before the morning light should place his secret in other hands.
"He's going to force an entrance and murder me," thought Margaret, who could reason distinctly in this moment of peril; "and, knowing that I only share the knowledge of his guilt, he hopes to escape suspicion. He will arrange it like a burglary—likely take away my few jewels and articles of value, and drop them in the mere. I am afraid I am lost."
These thoughts just glanced through her mind as lightning glimmers through the thunderous clouds, and, with the sudden instinct of self-preservation, she ran to the door, determined to rush into safety.