When the last faint murmur of voices ceased, and the dark silence closed about her, Jane sat quite still for a while. It is very difficult indeed to keep one’s eyes open in the dark. Jane found that her lids dropped, or else that the blackness became full of odd traceries that worried and disturbed her. She felt as if she had been there for hours and hours; and she knew that it really might be hours before Henry came.
She got up and walked slowly to where the passage came out into the main corridor. She stood under the arch and looked towards the laboratory turning. She had only to feel her way as far as that, turn up it, and she would come within sight of the lighted chamber where Ember and Lady Heritage were talking. The laboratory drew her, and the light drew her. She began to move cautiously along the corridor. She had on light house-shoes which made no sound.
The little glow which presently relieved the blackness cheered her unreasonably. It was a danger signal and she knew it, but it cheered her.
“One would rather be doing something dangerous than just mouldering in the pitch dark,” she told herself, and edged slowly nearer and nearer to the light.
She was now at the corner, and could look round it and through the steel bars into part of the laboratory. The disadvantage of her position was that she might be taken in the rear by any one who came along either the passage that she herself had come up or the slanting passage with the well in it which ran into the other at an acute angle, about six feet from where she was standing.
Jane, however, knew of no one who was at all likely to arrive except Henry. She therefore did not trouble about her rear, but looked with all her eyes into the laboratory. She saw Lady Heritage sitting in a tall chair, a little turned away. Her right elbow rested on one arm, and her chin was in her hand. Her eyes were downcast. She was speaking in a cold, gentle voice:
“I have not many friends—I thought you were my friend. Was it all lies, Jeffrey?”
Mr. Ember came into view for a moment. He must have been at the far end of the room. He came down it now, walked past Lady Heritage, and turned to face her. Jane saw his profile. He was smiling faintly.
“I am not fond of lies,” he said; “they are very entangling—so hard to keep one’s head and remember what one has said. Now the truth is so simple and easy; besides, you may believe it or not, I really do dislike lying to you. I have always told you the truth where it was humanly possible to do so. Even in the matter of Miss Molloy——”
Lady Heritage exclaimed suddenly and sharply, lifting her chin from her hand and throwing her head back: