Opposite was a confused heap of broken stones and natural rocks, cemented with clay, bound together by the roots of gnarled trees, the whole forming at the back of the picture a small, shallow grotto, full of crevices that admitted the light.  The floor, which Don Luis could easily distinguish, consisted of three or four flagstones.

Florence Levasseur lay inside this grotto, bound hand and foot, looking like the victim of some mysterious sacrifice about to be performed on the altar of the grotto, in the amphitheatre of this old garden closed by the wall of tall laurels and overlooked by a pile of ancestral ruins.

In spite of the distance, Don Luis was able to make out every detail of her pale face.  Though convulsed with anguish, it still retained a certain serenity, an expression of waiting and even of expectancy, as if Florence, believing, until the last moment, in the possibility of a miracle, had not yet relinquished all hope of life.

Nevertheless, though she was not gagged, she did not call for help.  Perhaps she thought that it was useless, and that the road which she had strewn with the marks of her passing was more likely to bring assistance to her side than cries, which the villain would soon have stifled.  Strange to say, it seemed to Don Luis as if the girl’s eyes were obstinately fixed on the very spot where he was hiding.  Possibly she suspected his presence.  Possibly she foresaw his help.

Suddenly Don Luis clutched one of his revolvers and half raised his arm, ready to take aim.  The sacrificer, the butcher, had just appeared, not far from the altar on which the victim lay.

He came from between two rocks, of which a bush marked the intervening space, which apparently afforded but a very low outlet, for he still walked as though bent double, with his head bowed and his long arms swinging so low as to touch the ground.

He went to the grotto and gave his horrible chuckle: 

“You’re still there, I see,” he said.  “No sign of the rescuer?  Perseus is a little late, I fear.  He’d better hurry!”

The tone of his voice was so shrill that Don Luis heard every word, and so odd, so unhuman, that it gave him a feeling of physical discomfort.  He gripped his revolver tightly, prepared to shoot at the first suspicious movement.

“He’d better hurry!” repeated the scoundrel, with a laugh.  “If not, all will be over in five minutes.  You see that I’m a man of method, eh, Florence, my darling?”

He picked up something from the ground.  It was a stick shaped like a crutch.  He put it under his left arm and, still bent in two, began to walk like a man who has not the strength to stand erect.  Then suddenly and with no apparent cause to explain his change of attitude, he drew himself up and used his crutch as he would a cane.  He then walked round the outside of the grotto, making a careful inspection, the meaning of which escaped Don Luis for the time.