The regular tread of a man booted and spurred came relentlessly towards
her, without haste and without pause. No one who wore spurs but her
father ever came that way. She listened breathlessly to the hollow
echoes, and turned her eyes along the wall of the embrasure. In a moment
she must see his gaunt figure, and the moonlight would be white on his
short grey beard.

* * * * *




CHAPTER IV


Dolores knew that there was no time to reflect as to what she should do,
if her father found her hiding in the embrasure, and yet in those short
seconds a hundred possibilities flashed through her disturbed thoughts.
She might slip past him and run for her life down the corridor, or she
might draw her hood over her face and try to pretend that she was some
one else,--but he would recognize the hood itself as belonging to
Inez,--or she might turn and lean upon the window-sill, indifferently,
as if she had a right to be there, and he might take her for some lady
of the court, and pass on. And yet she could not decide which to
attempt, and stood still, pressing herself against the wall of the
embrasure, and quite forgetful of the fact that the bright moonlight
fell unhindered through all the other windows upon the pavement, whereas
she cast a shadow from the one in which she was standing, and that any
one coming along the corridor would notice it and stop to see who was