Page:Randall Parrish--My Lady of the South.djvu/182

MY LADY OF THE SOUTH Navarre. Naturally I wish to make that man prisoner. I want him to come here where I can get my hands on him. Are you willing to sit here in the dark, thus helping me to draw him into the trap?"

Her eyes lifted to mine in a single searching glance.

"Yes," she said quietly; "I know I am nervous, strangely so, yet I am not afraid."

I blew out the light, placed two chairs back in the denser shadow underneath the circular staircase, and made her sit down in the one nearest the wall. Her hand was cold, trembling as I touched it, and I whispered a few words of courage into her ear, but she made no effort to respond. So silent was everything I could hear her light breathing, and the slightest change of posture seemed to start the echoes. Peering out around the stairs, I could see nothing except the darker shadow of furniture, dimly visible by reason of the little glimmer of light stealing forth from the partially opened door of the library, its light flickering giving everything a ghostly aspect. Perhaps we had been sitting thus for ten minutes, in a stillness so profound as to be painful, when I felt the girl's hand steal along the arm of my chair, and press my sleeve. The movement, unconsciously made perhaps, was eloquent of her distress of mind, and, obeying the first impulse, I reached across and clasped her fingers within my own. She made no effort to withdraw, and we sat thus in the dark, like two lovers, listening intently, neither venturing to speak. How the time dragged, the minutes seeming like hours under the continuous strain of expectation. I had much to consider, yet my mind did not [ 172 ]