he final
moment. "I can't leave you!" he said, holding helplessly by the hand she
had given him. "What must I do?"

"Come and see," she answered, without allowing him an instant to
reflect.

Closing her hand firmly on his, she led him along the first floor
corridor to the room numbered Four. "Notice that room," she whispered.
After a look over the stairs to see that they were alone, she retraced
her steps with him to the opposite extremity of the corridor. Here,
facing the window which lit the place at the other end, was one little
room, with a narrow grating in the higher part of the door, intended for
the sleeping apartment of the doctor's deputy. From the position of this
room, the grating commanded a view of the bed-chambers down each side of
the corridor, and so enabled the deputy-physician to inform himself of
any irregular proceedings on the part of the patients under his care,
with little or no chance of being detected in watching them. Miss Gwilt
opened the door and led the way into the empty room.

"Wait here," she said, "while I go back upstairs; and lock yourself in,
if you like. You will be in the dark, but the gas will be burning in the
corridor. Keep at the grating, and make sure that Mr. Armadale goes into
the room I have just pointed out to you, and that he doesn't leave it
afterward. If you lose sight of the room for a single moment before I
come back, you will repent it to the end of your life. If you do as I
tell you, you shall see me to-morrow, and claim your own reward. Quick
with your answer! Is it Yes or No?"

He could make no reply in words. He raised her hand to his lips, and
kissed it rapturously. She left him in the room. From his place at the
grating he saw her glide down the corridor to the staircase door. She
passed through it, and locked it. Then there was silence.

The next sound was the sound of the women-servants' voices. Two of them
came up to put the sheets on the beds in Number Three and Number Four.
The women were in high good-humor, laughing and talking to each other
through the open doors of the rooms. The master's customers were coming
in at last, they said, with a vengeance; the house would soon begin to
look cheerful, if things went on like this.

After a little, the beds were got ready and the women returned to the
kitchen floor, on which the sleeping-rooms of the domestic servants were
all situated. Then there was silence again.

The next sound was the sound of the d