s looking straight before her.

As the sound of Carker's fastening the door resounded through the
intermediate rooms, and seemed to come hushed and stilled into that last
distant one, the sound of the Cathedral clock striking twelve mingled
with it, in Edith's ears She heard him pause, as if he heard it too
and listened; and then came back towards her, laying a long train of
footsteps through the silence, and shutting all the doors behind him as
he came along. Her hand, for a moment, left the velvet chair to bring a
knife within her reach upon the table; then she stood as she had stood
before.

'How strange to come here by yourself, my love!' he said as he entered.

'What?' she returned.

Her tone was so harsh; the quick turn of her head so fierce; her
attitude so repellent; and her frown so black; that he stood, with the
lamp in his hand, looking at her, as if she had struck him motionless.

'I say,' he at length repeated, putting down the lamp, and smiling his
most courtly smile, 'how strange to come here alone! It was unnecessarty
caution surely, and might have defeated itself. You were to have engaged
an attendant at Havre or Rouen, and have had abundance of time for the
purpose, though you had been the most capricious and difficult (as you
are the most beautiful, my love) of women.'

Her eyes gleamed strangely on him, but she stood with her hand resting
on the chair, and said not a word.

'I have never,' resumed Carker, 'seen you look so handsome, as you do
to-night. Even the picture I have carried in my mind during this cruel
probation, and which I have contemplated night and day, is exceeded by
the reality.'

Not a word. Not a look Her eyes completely hidden by their drooping
lashes, but her head held up.

'Hard, unrelenting terms they were!' said Carker, with a smile, 'but
they are all fulfilled and passed, and make the present more delicious
and more safe. Sicily shall be the Place of our retreat. In the idlest
and easiest part of the world, my soul, we'll both seek compensation for
old slavery.'

He was coming gaily towards her, when, in an instant, she caught the
knife up from the table, and started one pace back.

'Stand still!' she said, 'or I shall murder you!'

The sudden change in her, the towering fury and intense abhorrence
sparkling in her eyes and lighting up her brow, made him stop as if a
fire had stopped him.

'Stand still!' she said, 'come no nearer me, upon your life!'

They bo