She was panting as if from some painful exertion.  Her hands were damp and chill, her temples throbbed.  The room seemed strange, close shuttered and silent, as if it sheltered the silent, unresponsive dead.  The air was oppressive, and the light that filtered through the dim blinds was vague and uncanny.

It was some moments before she felt herself under sufficient control to cross by the big Jacobean table, and face the hooded fireplace—­“to the left, the second panel.”  She stared at it.  To all appearances it was reassuringly the same as all the others.  Gently she pushed it right and left, then up and down, but her pressure was so slight and nervous that it did not stir the heavy wood.  She breathed a great sigh of relief, and beginning now to believe herself the victim of some cruel hoax, she dared a firmer pressure.  The panel responded—­moved—­slid slowly behind its fellow—­revealing the steel muzzle of a safe let into the solid masonry.  It seemed the result of some evil witchcraft; her blood chilled.  Yet, with renewed eagerness, she turned the combination.  She did not need to refer to the letter, she knew it by heart—­the numbers were seared there.  The heavy door swung outward.  Within she saw well-remembered cases of velvet and morocco.  This contained her mother’s diamond collar; that her lavalliere; the emerald pendant was in the box of ivory velvet; the earrings and the antique diamond rings in the little round-topped casket, embossed and inlaid.  Sliding her finger along the inner frame of the safe, she felt a knob, and pressed it.  One side of the receptacle clicked open, revealing an inner compartment.

Then panic seized her.  She could never recall shutting the safe door and replacing the panel, the movements were automatic.  She was out of the library and running down the corridor before she realized it.  Once more in the sanctuary of her own room, she threw herself upon the bed, buried her face in the tumbled pillow and gasped for breath.

“What shall I do!—­what shall I do!” she moaned aloud.  “I’m afraid—­Oh, I’m afraid!” like a little child crying in the night in the awful isolation of an empty house.  Suddenly she sat up.  The tears dried upon her curved lashes.  Of course, of course—­Mr. Gard, her friend, her mother’s friend.  The very thought of him steadied her.  The terrified child of her untried self, vanished before the coming of a new and active womanhood.  She thought quickly and clearly.  “He would be at his office,” she reasoned.  “He had mentioned an important meeting.  She would go there at once—­cancelling her luncheon engagement on the ground of some simple ailment.  Tante Lydia must not know.  Once let Gard, with his master grip, control the situation, and she would feel safe as in a walled castle strongly defended.  A tower of strength—­a tower of strength.”  She repeated the words to herself as if they were a talisman.  She felt as if, from afar, her mother had counseled her.  She would go to him.  It was the right thing, the only thing to do.