What awaited her?

What awaited the judge?

As the little woman shook with terror in her secret hiding-place
she felt that she had played him false; that she had no right to
save herself by the violation of a privacy she should have held in
awe. She was paying for her temerity now, paying for it with every
terrible moment that her suspense endured. The gasping, struggling
men, the frantic negro, were in the next room now--she could catch
the sound of the latter's panting breath rising above the clamour
of strange entreaties and excited cries with which the air was
full; then a quick, hoarse shout of "Judge! Judge!" rose in the
doorway, and she became conscious of the presence of a headlong,
rushing force struck midway into silence as the frozen figure of
his master flashed upon the negro's eyes;--then,--a growl of
concentrated emotion, uttered almost in her ear, and the screen
which had been her refuge was violently thrust away from before
her, and in its place she beheld a terrible being standing over
her, in whose eyes, dilating under this fresh surprise, she beheld
her doom, even while recognising that if she must suffer it would
be simply as an obstacle to some goal at her back which he must
reach--now--before he fell in his blood and died.

What was this goal? As she felt herself lifted, nay, almost hurled
aside, she turned to see and found it to be a door before which
the devoted Bela had now thrown himself, guarding it with every
inch of his powerful but rapidly sinking body, and chattering
defiance with his bloodless, quivering lips--a figure terrible in