Then he disposed himself for the night.  He sat down across the top step of the stairs with his back propped against the passage wall.  Facing him was the door of Clementina’s room, on his left hand the passage with the oil lamp burning on a bracket, stretched to the house-wall; on his right the stairs descended straight for some steps, then turned to the left and ran down still within view to a point where again they turned outwards into the courtyard.  Wogan saw to the priming of his pistols and laid them beside him.  He looked out to his right over the low-roofed buildings opposite, and saw the black mountains with their glimmering crests, and just above one spur a star which flashed with a particular brightness.  He was very tired and very cold; he drew his cloak about him; he leaned back against the wall and watched that star.  So long as he saw that, he was awake, and therefore he watched it.  At what time sleep overtook him he could never discover.  It seemed to him always that he did not even for a second lose sight of that star.  Only it dilated, it grew brighter, it dropped towards earth, and he was not in any way surprised.  He was merely pleased with it for behaving in so attractive and natural a way.  Then, however, the strange thing happened.  When the star was hung in the air between earth and sky and nearer to the earth, it opened like a flower and disclosed in its bright heart the face of a girl, which was yet brighter.  And that girl’s face, with the broad low brows and the dark eyes and the smile which held all earth and much of heaven, stooped and stooped out of fire through the cool dark towards him until her lips touched his.  It was then that he woke, quietly as was his wont, without any start, without opening his eyes, and at once he was aware of someone breathing.

He raised his eyelids imperceptibly and peered through his eyelashes.  He saw close beside him the lower part of a woman’s frock, and it was the frock which Clementina wore.  One wild question set his heart leaping within his breast.  “Was there truth in the dream?” he asked himself; and while he was yet formulating the question, Clementina’s breathing was suddenly arrested.  It seemed to him, too, from the little that he saw between his closed eyes, that she stiffened from head to foot.  She stood in that rigid attitude, very still.  Something new had plainly occurred, something that brought with it a shock of surprise.  Wogan, without moving his head or opening his eyes a fraction wider, looked down the staircase and saw just above the edge of one of the steep stairs a face watching them,—­a face with bright, birdlike eyes and an indescribable expression of cunning.

Wogan had need of all his self-control.  He felt that his eyelids were fluttering on his cheeks, that his breath had stopped even as Clementina’s had.  For the face which he saw was one quite familiar to him, though never familiar with that expression.  It was the face of an easy-going gentleman who made up for the lack of his wit by the heartiness of his laugh, and to whom Wogan had been drawn because of his simplicity.  There was no simplicity in Henry Whittington’s face now.  It remained above the edge of the step staring at them with a look of crafty triumph, a very image of intrigue.  Then it disappeared silently.