It dropped from her powerless
fingers as she finished; and she sank back in her chair with such
a ghastly paleness, that it seemed absolutely like the lividness
of death.
A sudden and startling noise awoke her from her trance of horror
- some one trying to get in at the window! The chill of terror
it sent through every vein acted as a sort of counter-irritant to
the other feeling, and she sprang from her chair and turned her
face fearfully toward the sounds. But in all her terror she did
not forget the mysterious sheet of foolscap, which lay, looking
up at her, on the floor; and she snatched it up, and thrust it
and the casket out of sight. Still the sounds went on, but
softly and cautiously; and at intervals, as if the worker were
afraid of being heard. Leoline went back, step by step, to the
other extremity of the room, with her eyes still fixed on the
window, and on her face a white terror, that left her perfectly
colorless.
Who could it be? Not Count L'Estrange, for he would surely not
need to enter his own house like a burglar - not Sir Norman
Kingsley, for he could certainly not find out her abduction and
her prison so soon, and she had no other friends in the whole
wide world to trouble themselves about her.
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