repeated as regularly as the breath might come and go in a woman's
breast.

After a while Toyner retreated with noiseless steps, standing still when
he had moved away about fifty paces, looking at the house again with
careful, suspicious eyes; then, as if satisfied, he slid back the iron
shade that covered his lantern and, lighting his own steps, he walked
away.

He had moved so quietly that the girl who lay upon the bed did not hear
him. She did not, in fact, know for certain whether he had been there or
not, much less that he had gone, so that she toilsomely kept up the
pretence of that gentle snore for half an hour or more. It was very
tiresome. Her bright black eyes were wide open as she lay performing
this exercise. Her face never lost its look of strong resolution. At
length, true to her acting, she moved her head sleepily, sighed heavily,
and relapsed into silent breathing as a sleeper might. It was the acting
of a true artist.

Half an hour more of silence upon her bed, and she crept off
noiselessly; she lifted the corner of the window-curtain and looked out.
There was not a light to be seen in any of the houses within sight,
there was not a sound to be heard except the foam at the foot of the
falls, the lapping of the nearer river, and the voice of a myriad
crickets in the grass. She opened the window silently.

"Bart," she whispered. Then a little louder, "Bart--Bart Toyner."

The one thing that she wanted just then was to be alone, and of all
people in the world Toyner was the man whom she least wanted to meet.