eir footsteps.

"Gabrielle! Gabrielle, my dear!" exclaimed the Baronet.

But though her heart beat quickly, the girl did not reply. She knew,
however, that the old man could almost read her innermost thoughts. The
ominous words of Flockart rang in her ears. Yes, he could tell a
terrible and awful truth which must be concealed at all hazards.

"I felt sure I heard Gabrielle's voice. How curious!" murmured the old
man, as his feet fell noiselessly upon the thick Turkey carpet.
"Gabrielle, dear!" he called. But his daughter stood there breathless
and silent, not daring to move a muscle. Plain it was that while passing
across the lawn outside he heard her voice. He had overheard her
declaration that she was prepared to bear the consequences of her
disgrace.

Across the room the blind man groped, his hand held before him, as was
his habit. "Strange! Remarkably strange!" he remarked to himself quite
aloud. "I'm never mistaken in Gabrielle's voice. Gabrielle, dear, where
are you? Why don't you speak? It's too late to-night to play practical
jokes."

Flockart knew that he had left the safe-door open, yet he dared not move
across the room to close it. The sightless man would detect the
slightest movement in that dead silence of the night. With great care he
left the girl's side, and a single stride brought him to the large
writing-table, where he secured the document, together with the
pencilled memoranda of its purport, both of which he slipped into his
pocket unobserved.

Gabrielle dared not breathe. Her discovery there meant her ruin.

The man who held her in his toils cast her an evil, threatening glance,
raising his clenched fist in menace, as though daring her to make the
slightest movement. In his dark eyes showed a sinister expression, and
his nether lip was hard. She was, alas! utterly and completely in his
power.

The safe was some distance away, and in order to reach and close it he
would be compelled to pass the man in blue spectacles now standing,
puzzled and surprised, in the centre of the great book-lined apartment.
Both of them could escape by the open window, but to do so would be to
court discovery should the Baronet find his safe standing open. In that
case the alarm would be raised, and they would both be found outside the
house, instead of within.

Slowly the old man drew his thin hand across his furrowed brow, and
then, as a sudden recollection dawned upon him, he cried, "Ah, the
window! Why, th