She knew enough of her changed self to dread the enervating influence of delay.  She determined to run the risk headlong that night.

More blunders escaped her when dinner-time came; the admiral’s criticisms on her waiting at table were sharper than ever.  His hardest words inflicted no pain on her; she scarcely heard him—­her mind was dull to every sense but the sense of the coming trial.  The evening which had passed slowly to her on the night of her first experiment with the keys passed quickly now.  When bed-time came, bed-time took her by surprise.

She waited longer on this occasion than she had waited before.  The admiral was at home; he might alter his mind and go downstairs again, after he had gone up to his room; he might have forgotten something in the library and might return to fetch it.  Midnight struck from the clock in the servants’ hall before she ventured out of her room, with the keys again in her pocket, with the candle again in her hand.

At the first of the stairs on which she set her foot to descend, an all-mastering hesitation, an unintelligible shrinking from some peril unknown, seized her on a sudden.  She waited, and reasoned with herself.  She had recoiled from no sacrifices, she had yielded to no fears, in carrying out the stratagem by which she had gained admission to St. Crux; and now, when the long array of difficulties at the outset had been patiently conquered, now, when by sheer force of resolution the starting-point was gained, she hesitated to advance.  “I shrank from nothing to get here,” she said to herself.  “What madness possesses me that I shrink now?”

Every pulse in her quickened at the thought, with an animating shame that nerved her to go on.  She descended the stairs, from the third floor to the second, from the second to the first, without trusting herself to pause again within easy reach of her own room.  In another minute, she had reached the end of the corridor, had crossed the vestibule, and had entered the drawing-room.  It was only when her grasp was on the heavy brass handle of the sliding door—­it was only at the moment before she pushed the door back—­that she waited to take breath.  The Banqueting-Hall was close on the other side of the wooden partition against which she stood; her excited imagination felt the death-like chill of it flowing over her already.

She pushed back the sliding door a few inches—­and stopped in momentary alarm.  When the admiral had closed it in her presence that day, she had heard no noise.  When old Mazey had opened it to show her the rooms in the east wing, she had heard no noise.  Now, in the night silence, she noticed for the first time that the door made a sound—­a dull, rushing sound, like the wind.

She roused herself, and pushed it further back—­pushed it halfway into the hollow chamber in the wall constructed to receive it.  She advanced boldly into the gap, and met the night view of the Banqueting-Hall face to face.