to whether they should make their way into the
castle larder through the gallery, and satisfy
their hunger before the hasty interment, or
afterwards. I listened with eager feverish interest
as soon as this meaning of their speeches
reached my hot and troubled brain, for at the
time the words they uttered seemed only to
stamp themselves with terrible force on my
memory, so that I could hardly keep from
repeating them aloud like a dull, miserable,
unconscious echo; but my brain was numb to the
sense of what they said, unless I myself were
named, and then, I suppose, some instinct of
self-preservation stirred within me, and quickened
my sense. And how I strained my ears,
and nerved my hands and limbs, beginning to
twitch with convulsive movements, which I
feared might betray me! I gathered every word
they spoke, not knowing which proposal to wish
for, but feeling that whatever was finally decided
upon, my only chance of escape was drawing
near. I once feared lest my husband should
go to his bedroom before I had had that one
chance, in which case he would most likely
have perceived my absence. He said that his
hands were soiled (I shuddered, for it might be
with life-blood), and he would go and cleanse
them; but some bitter jest turned his purpose,
and he left the room with the other two— left
it by the gallery door. Left me alone in the
dark with the stiffening corpse!

Now, now was my time, if ever; and yet I
could not move. It was not my cramped and
stiffened joints that crippled me, it was the
sensation of that dead man's close presence. I
almost fancied— I almost fancy still— I heard
the arm nearest to me move; lift itself up, as if
once more imploring, and fall in dead despair.
At that fancy— if fancy it were— I screamed
aloud in mad terror, and the sound of my own
strange voice broke the spell. I drew myself to
the side of the table farthest from the corpse,
with as much slow caution as if I really could
have feared the clutch of that poor dead arm,
powerless for evermore. I softly raised myself
up, and stood sick and trembling holding by the
table, too dizzy to know what to do next. I
nearly fainted, when a low voice spoke— when
Amante, from the outside of the door,
whispered, "Madame!" The faithful creature had
been on the watch, had heard my scream, and
having seen the three ruffians troop along the
gallery down the stairs, and across the court to
the offices in the other wing of the castle, she
had stolen to the door of the room in which I
was. The sound of her voice gave me strength;
I walked straight towards it, as one benighted
on a dreary moor, suddenly perceiving the small
steady light which tells of human dwellings,
takes heart, and steers straight onward. Where
I was, where that voice was, I knew not; but go
to it I must, or die. The door once opened— I
know not by which of us— I fell upon her neck,
grasping her tight, till my hands ached with the
tension of their hold. Yet she never uttered
a word. Only she took me up in her vigorous
arms and bore me to my room, and laid me on
my bed. I do not know more; as soon as I
was placed there I lost sense; I came to myself
with a horrible dread lest my husband was by
me, with a belief that he was in the room, in
hiding, waiting to hear my first words, watching
for the least sign of the terrible knowledge I
possessed to murder me. I dared not breathe
quicker, I measured and timed each heavy
inspiration; I did not speak, nor move, nor even
open my eyes, for long after I was in my full,
my miserable senses. I heard some one treading
softly about the room, as if with a purpose,
not as if for curiosity, or merely to beguile the
time; some one passed in and out of the salon;
and I still lay quiet, feeling as if death were
inevitable, but wishing that the agony of death
were past. Again faintness stole over me, but
just as I was sinking into the horrible feeling of
nothingness I heard Amante's voice close to me,
saying,

"Drink this, madame, and let us begone. All
is ready."

I let her put her arm under my head and raise
me, and pour something down my throat. All the
time she kept talking in a quiet measured voice,
unlike her own, so dry and authoritative; she
told me that a suit of her clothes lay ready for
me, that she herself was as much disguised as
the circumstances permitted her to be, that what
provisions I had left from my supper were stowed
away in her pockets, and so she went on, dwelling
on little details of the most common-place
description, but never alluding for an instant to
the fearful cause why flight was necessary. I
made no inquiry as to how she knew, or what
she knew. I never asked her either then or
afterwards, I could not bear it— we kept our
dreadful secret close. But I suppose she must
have been in the dressing-room adjoining, and
heard all.

In fact, I dared not speak even to her, as if
there were anything beyond the most common
event in life in our preparing thus to leave the
house of blood by stealth in the dead of night.
She gave me directions short condensed directions,
without reasons just as you do to a child;
and like a child I obeyed her. She went often
to the door and listened; and often, too, she
went to the window, and looked anxiously out.
For me, I saw nothing but her, and I dared not
let my eyes wander from her for a minute; and
I heard nothing in the deep midnight silence but
her soft movements, and the heavy beating of
my own heart. At last she took my hand, and
led me in the dark, through the salon, once
more into the terrible gallery, where across the
black darkness the windows admitted pale
sheeted ghosts of light upon the floor. Clinging
to her I went; unquestioning for she was
human sympathy to me after the isolation of my
unspeakable terror. On we went, turning to
the left instead of to the right, past my suite
of sitting-rooms where the gilding was red with
blood, into that unknown wing of the castle
that fronted the main road lying parallel far
below. She guided me along the basement
passages to which we had now descended, until