As she spoke, her hand met Henry’s on the switch of the torch. The light went out. Jane clung to one of the hard, strong fingers as she listened with all her ears. She heard a footstep, light and unmistakable, and it stopped upon the threshold.
There were about twenty seconds of really terrifying silence, and then the handle of the door turned slowly. Jane heard the creak of the hinge, the minute rattle of the latch. Then the handle was released, but slowly and with the least possible noise. There was another silence.
Jane pinched Henry as hard as she could, and though this, of course, relieved the strain she felt dreadfully afraid that she would scream unless something broke through this dreadful quiet.
Something did break through it next moment, for there came a low knocking on the door, and with the first sound of that knocking Jane recovered herself. With an extraordinary quickness and lightness she was on her feet and out of the cupboard, the cupboard was shut, and Jane, her shoes noiselessly discarded, was sitting on the side of a rumpled bed, a fold of the sheet across her mouth, inquiring in sleepy, muffled accents:
“What is it? Who’s there?”
The knocking had gone on steadily. Now it stopped, and a voice said, “It is I, Lady Heritage. Open the door.”
Jane threw back the bedclothes so as to cover the chair at the bed-foot—a chair upon which there should have been a neatly folded pile of clothes—pulled off her stockings, and took the key out of the dressing-table drawer.
“Oh, what is it?” she said, and fumbled at the lock.
Next moment the door was open, and she saw Lady Heritage in her white linen overall and head-dress, the latter pushed back and showing her hair.
Lady Heritage saw a startled girl in a red flannel dressing-gown. Between the moonlight and the light from the passage there was a sort of dusk. Lady Heritage put her hand on the switch, but did not pull it down. Instead, she said quickly: