!"

The Baron started, and from that moment his air of resignation began to
affront the Countess as deeply as his previous violence. When they were
again alone, stretched in black darkness each upon their couch, she
lifted up her voice in a last word of protest--

"Rudolph! have you no single feeling for me left? Why didn't you stab
that man?"

But the Baron merely retorted with a lifelike affectation of snoring.

CHAPTER XXXVI

For a long time the Baron lay wide awake, every sense alert, listening
for the creak of a footstep on the wooden stair that led up from the
harness-room to his prison. What else could the strange words of Dugald
have meant, save that some friend proposed to climb those stairs
and gently open that stubborn door? And in this opinion he had been
confirmed when he observed that on Dugald's departure the key turned
with a silence suggesting a recently oiled lock. His bed lay along the
wall, with the head so close to the door that any one opening it and
stretching forth a hand could tweak him by the nose without an effort
(supposing that were the object of their visit). Clearly, he thought, it
was not thus arranged without some very special purpose. Yet when hour
after hour passed and nothing happened, he began to sleep fitfully,
and at last, worn out with fruitless waiting, dropped into a profound
slumber.

He was in the midst of a harassing dream or drama, wherein Bunker and
Eva played an incoherent part and he himself passed wearily from peril
to peril, when the stage suddenly was cleared, his eyes started open,
and he became wakefully conscious of a little ray of light that fell
upon his face. Before he could raise his head a soft voice whispered
urgently,

"Don't move!"

With admirable self-control he obeyed implicitly.

"Who is zere?" he whispered back.

The voice seemed for a moment to hesitate, and then answered--

"Eleanor Maddison!"

He started so audibly that again she breathed peremptorily--

"Hush! Lie still till I come back. You--you don't deserve it, but I want
to save you from the disgrace of arrest."

"Ach, zank you--mine better angel!" he murmured, with a fervor that
seemed not unpleasing to his rescuer.

"You really are a nobleman in trouble?"

"I swear I am!"

"And didn't mean anything really wrong?"

"Never--oh, never!"

More kindly than before she murmured--

"Well, I guess I'll take you out, then. I've bribed Dugald, so that's
all right. When my c