is it that, in times like these, such conceits beset us, such
comparisons arise? Does the quality called presence of mind find root in
the same source that impels us to apt quotation?--

"What if the lion in his rage I meet?
Oft in the dust I see his printed feet."

I gained fresh heart from that trivial diversion of thought, and stood
quietly contemplating alternately the hall below and that above (both of
which were visible from my place on the intermediate platform; all was
still in both of these wide corridors), to make sure of the safety of my
enterprise; and now, once more my foot was on the brink of those
mysterious stairs which led, I felt, to doom or to liberty. I commenced,
very cautiously, to descend them. The study-door at their foot was
closed, and all seemed silent within. The murmur of voices, and the
remote rattling of china proceeding from the ell behind the hall,
encouraged me to believe that on this bitter night the family was
concentrated, for greater comfort, in the supper-room.

With my hand on the baluster, pausing at every step, I crept quietly
down the stairway; then, as if my feet were suddenly winged with terror,
I darted by the study-door, flew lightly over the carpeted hall, and
found myself, in another moment, secure within, the small enclosed
vestibule into which the door of entrance gave. My worst misgivings had
never compassed the terrific truth. At this early hour of the evening,
not only was the front door locked, but the key had been withdrawn. This
was despair.

My knees gave way beneath me, and I sank like a flaccid heap in the
corner, against one of the leaves of the small folding-door that divided
the arched vestibule from the long entry, and which was secured to the
floor by a bolt, while the other one was thrown back. Crouched in the
shadow, powerless to move or think, I heard, with inexpressible terror,
the door of the study open, and the voice and step of Bainrothe in the
hall, approaching me.

Had he heard me? Would he come? Was I betrayed?

I felt my hair rise on my head as these questions rang like a tocsin
through my brain, and I think, at that moment, I had a foretaste of the
chief agony of death.

They were answered by Bainrothe himself, as he paused midway between the
study-door and my place of refuge; and again I breathed--I lived.

"I was mistaken, 'Stasia, it is not he! the wind, probably; and that
marble looks so cold--so uninviting--I shall not explor