Next moment the silence was broken by the faint, far-away sound of a horn, playing a slow, sweet air. Mora lifted her head and listened.
‘Music on the lake. How sweet it sounds. It has broken the spell that held me. It seems like the voice of a friend calling through the darkness. I will walk down to the edge of the water. The cool air from the hills will do me good.’
There was a black lace scarf hanging over the arm of a couch; she took it up and draped it over her head and round her throat and shoulders. Her foot was on the threshold, she was in the act of stepping out into the veranda, when she heard a voice outside speaking to some other person. The instant she heard it she shrank back as though petrified with horror.
‘That voice! Can the grave give up its dead?’ she whispered as though she were asking the question of some one.
Next moment the figures of two men, one walking a little way behind the other, became distinctly outlined against the evening sky as they advanced up the sloping pathway from the lake. The first of the two men was smoking, the second was carrying some articles of luggage.
The first man came to a halt nearly opposite the windows of Madame de Vigne’s sitting-room. Turning to the second man, he said, with a pronounced French accent: ‘Take my luggage into the hotel. I will stay here a little while and smoke.’
The second man passed forward out of sight. The first man, still standing on the same spot, took out another cigar, struck a match, and proceeded to light it. For a moment by the light of the match his features were plainly visible; next moment all was darkness again.
But Madame De Vigne, crouching behind the curtains of the dimly lighted room, had seen enough to cause her heart to die within her.
‘The grave has given up its dead! It is he!’ her blanched lips murmured.
Some minutes later, Clarice Loraine, on going into the sitting-room, found her sister on the floor in a dead faint.