Page:Stanley Weyman--Count Hannibal.djvu/250

238 Assured of this fact, the Countess presently heaved a sigh, and slipped from the bed. She groped in the darkness for her cloak, found it, and donned it over her night gear. Then, taking her bearings by her bed, which stood with its head to the window and its foot to the entrance, she felt her way across the floor to the door, and after passing her hands a dozen times over every part of it, she found the latch, and raised it. The door creaked, as she pulled it open, and she stood arrested; but the sound went no farther, for the roofed gallery outside, which looked by two windows on the courtyard, was full of outdoor noises, the rushing of rain and the running of spouts and eaves. One of the windows stood wide, admitting the rain and wind, and as she paused, holding the door open, the draught blew the cloak from her. She stepped out quickly and shut the door behind her. On her left was the blind end of the passage; she turned to the right. She took one step into the darkness and stood motionless. Beside her, within a few feet of her, some one had moved, with a dull sound as of a boot on wood; a sound so near her that she held her breath, and pressed herself against the wall.

She listened. Perhaps some of the servants—it was a common usage—had made their beds on the floor. Perhaps one of the women had stirred in the room against the wall of which she crouched. Perhaps—but, even while she reassured herself, the sound rose anew at her feet.

Fortunately at the same instant the glare of the lightning flooded all, and showed the passage, and showed it empty. It lit up the row of doors on her right and the small windows on her left, and discovered facing her the door which shut off the rest of the house. She could have thanked—nay, she did thank God for that light. If the sound she had heard recurred she did not hear it; for, as the thunder which followed hard on the flash crashed