I think my father had intended making some disclosure to me on reaching this room.  If so, he changed his mind, or at least postponed his intention.

He had paused before the cabinet, respecting the key of which he had given me so strict a charge, and I think he was going to explain himself more fully than he had done.  But he went on, instead, to the table where his desk, always jealously locked, was placed, and having lighted the candles which stood by it, he glanced at me, and said—­

’You must wait a little, Maud; I shall have something to say to you.  Take this candle and amuse yourself with a book meanwhile.’

I was accustomed to obey in silence.  I chose a volume of engravings, and ensconced myself in a favourite nook in which I had often passed a half-hour similarly.  This was a deep recess by the fireplace, fenced on the other side by a great old escritoir.  Into this I drew a stool, and, with candle and book, I placed myself snugly in the narrow chamber.  Every now and then I raised my eyes and saw my father either writing or ruminating, as it seemed to me, very anxiously at his desk.

Time wore on—­a longer time than he had intended, and still he continued absorbed at his desk.  Gradually I grew sleepy, and as I nodded, the book and room faded away, and pleasant little dreams began to gather round me, and so I went off into a deep slumber.

It must have lasted long, for when I wakened my candle had burnt out; my father, having quite forgotten me, was gone, and the room was dark and deserted.  I felt cold and a little stiff, and for some seconds did not know where I was.

I had been wakened, I suppose, by a sound which I now distinctly heard, to my great terror, approaching.  There was a rustling; there was a breathing.  I heard a creaking upon the plank that always creaked when walked upon in the passage.  I held my breath and listened, and coiled myself up in the innermost recess of my little chamber.

Sudden and sharp, a light shone in from the nearly-closed study door.  It shone angularly on the ceiling like a letter L reversed.  There was a pause.  Then some one knocked softly at the door, which after another pause was slowly pushed open.  I expected, I think, to see the dreaded figure of the linkman.  I was scarcely less frightened to see that of Madame de la Rougierre.  She was dressed in a sort of grey silk, which she called her Chinese silk—­precisely as she had been in the daytime.  In fact, I do not think she had undressed.  She had no shoes on.  Otherwise her toilet was deficient in nothing.  Her wide mouth was grimly closed, and she stood scowling into the room with a searching and pallid scrutiny, the candle held high above her head at the full stretch of her arm.

Placed as I was in a deep recess, and in a seat hardly raised above the level of the floor, I escaped her, although it seemed to me for some seconds, as I gazed on this spectre, that our eyes actually met.