manipulation of her dainty fingers she moved the jewel about in
this small receptacle and then returned it, after one quick
examining glance, to the very spot on the dresser from which she
had taken it. "If only the madness is great enough!" that smile
seemed to say. Truly, it was much to hope for, but a chance is a
chance; and comforting herself with the thought, Miss Strange put
out her light, and, with a hasty raising of the shade she had
previously pulled down, took a final look at the prospect.

Its aspect made her shudder. A low fog was rising from the
meadows in the far distance, and its ghostliness under the moon
woke all sorts of uncanny images in her excited mind. To escape
them she crept into bed where she lay with her eyes on the end of
her dresser. She had closed that half of the French window over
which she had drawn the shade; but she had left ajar the one
giving free access to the jewels; and when she was not watching
the scintillation of her sapphires in the moonlight, she was
dwelling in fixed attention on this narrow opening.

But nothing happened, and two o'clock, then three o'clock struck,
without a dimming of the blue scintillations on the end of her
dresser. Then she suddenly sat up. Not that she heard anything
new, but that a thought had come to her. "If an attempt is made,"
so she murmured softly to herself, "it will be by--" She did not
finish. Something--she could not call it sound--set her heart
beating tumultuously, and listening--listening--watching--
watching--she followed in her imagination the approach down the
balcony of an almost inaudible step, not daring to move herself,
it seemed so near, but waiting with eyes fixed, for the shadow
which must fall across the shade she had failed to raise over