ires of the grating. After first hiding
it in his pocket, he thought of the consequences if it was found on him,
and threw it down in a corner of the room. He trembled when he had cast
it from him, as he looked at his watch and placed himself again at the
grating to wait for Miss Gwilt.

It was a quarter to one. The moon had come round from the side to the
front of the Sanitarium. From time to time her light gleamed on the
window of the corridor when the gaps in the flying clouds let it
through. The wind had risen, and sung its mournful song faintly, as it
swept at intervals over the desert ground in front of the house.

The minute hand of the clock traveled on halfway round the circle of the
dial. As it touched the quarter-past one, Miss Gwilt stepped noiselessly
into the corridor. "Let yourself out," she whispered through the
grating, "and follow me." She returned to the stairs by which she
had just descended, pushed the door to softly after Mr. Bashwood had
followed her and led the way up to the landing of the second floor.
There she put the question to him which she had not ventured to put
below stairs.

"Was Mr. Armadale shown into Number Four?" she asked.

He bowed his head without speaking.

"Answer me in words. Has Mr. Armadale left the room since?"

He answered, "No."

"Have you never lost sight of Number Four since I left you?"

He answered, "_Never_!"

Something strange in his manner, something unfamiliar in his voice, as
he made that last reply, attracted her attention. She took her candle
from a table near, on which she had left it, and threw its light on
him. His eyes were staring, his teeth chattered. There was everything to
betray him to her as a terrified man; there was nothing to tell her that
the terror was caused by his consciousness of deceiving her, for the
first time in his life, to her face. If she had threatened him less
openly when she placed him on the watch; if she had spoken less
unreservedly of the interview which was to reward him in the morning,
he might have owned the truth. As it was, his strongest fears and his
dearest hopes were alike interested in telling her the fatal lie that
he had now told--the fatal lie which he reiterated when she put her
question for the second time.

She looked at him, deceived by the last man on earth whom she would have
suspected of deception--the man whom she had deceived herself.

"You seem to be overexcited," she said quietly. "The night has