She took my hand coolly enough and stepped down into the passage. Then I broke upon her stormily.

“You don’t seem to understand the gravity of what you are doing ! Don’t you know that you are risking your life in crawling through this house at midnight? —that even to serve Arthur Pickering, a life is a pretty big thing to throw away ? Your infatuation for that blackguard seems to carry you far, Miss Devereux.”

She swung the lantern at arm’s length back and forth so that its rays at every forward motion struck my face like a blow.

“It isn’t exactly pleasant in this cavern. Unless you wish to turn me over to the lord high executioner, I will bid you good night.”

“But the infamy of this—of coming in here to spy upon me—to help my enemy—the man who is seeking plunder—doesn’t seem to trouble you. ”

“No, not a particle !” she replied quietly, and then, with an impudent fling, “Oh, no !” She held up the lantern to look at the wick. “I’m really disappointed to find that you were a little ahead of me, Squire Glenarm. I didn’t give you credit for so much—perseverance. But if you have the notes—”

“The notes ! He told you there were notes, did he ? The coward sent you here to find them, after his other tools failed him ?”

She laughed that low laugh of hers that was like the bubble of a spring.

“I beg your pardon!” she said, and laughed.      Page 311

“Of course no one would dare deny what the great” Squire Glenarm says, she said witheringly.

“You can’t know what your perfidy means to me,” I said. “That night, at the Armstrongs’, I thrilled at the sight of you. As you came down the stairway I thought of you as my good angel, and I belonged to you, —all my life, the better future that I wished to make for your sake.”

“Please don’t !” And I felt that my words had touched her; that there were regret and repentance in her tone and in the gesture with which she turned from me.

She hurried down the passage swinging the lantern at her side, and I followed, so mystified, so angered by her composure, that I scarcely knew what I did. She even turned, with pretty courtesy, to hold the light for me at the crypt steps,—a service that I accepted perforce and with joyless acquiescence in the irony of it. I knew that I did not believe in her; her conduct as to Pickering was utterly indefensible,—I could not forget that; but the light of her eyes, her tranquil brow, the sensitive lips, whose mockery stung and pleased in a breath,—by such testimony my doubts were alternately reinforced and disarmed. Swept by these changing moods I followed her out into the crypt.