She listened.  Perhaps some of the servants—­it was a common usage—­had made their beds on the floor.  Perhaps one of the women had stirred in the room against the wall of which she crouched.  Perhaps—­but, even while she reassured herself, the sound rose anew at her feet.

Fortunately at the same instant the glare of the lightning flooded all, and showed the passage, and showed it empty.  It lit up the row of doors on her right and the small windows on her left, and discovered facing her the door which shut off the rest of the house.  She could have thanked—­nay, she did thank God for that light.  If the sound she had heard recurred she did not hear it; for, as the thunder which followed hard on the flash crashed overhead and rolled heavily eastwards, she felt her way boldly along the passage, touching first one door, and then a second, and then a third.

She groped for the latch of the last, and found it, but, with her hand on it, paused.  In order to summon up her courage, she strove to hear again the cries of misery and to see again the haggard eyes which had driven her hither.  And if she did not wholly succeed, other reflections came to her aid.  This storm, which covered all smaller noises, and opened, now and again, God’s lantern for her use, did it not prove that He was on her side, and that she might count on His protection?  The thought at least was timely, and with a better heart she gathered her wits.  Waiting until the thunder burst over her head, she opened the door, slid within it, and closed it.  She would fain have left it ajar, that in case of need she might escape the more easily.  But the wind, which beat into the passage through the open window, rendered the precaution too perilous.

She went forward two paces into the room, and as the roll of the thunder died away she stooped forward and listened with painful intensity for the sound of Count Hannibal’s breathing.  But the window was open, and the hiss of the rain persisted; she could hear nothing through it, and fearfully she took another step forward.  The window should be before her; the bed in the corner to the left.  But nothing of either could she make out.  She must wait for the lightning.

It came, and for a second or more the room shone.  The window, the low truckle-bed, the sleeper, she saw all with dazzling clearness, and before the flash had well passed she was crouching low, with the hood of her cloak dragged about her face.  For the glare had revealed Count Hannibal; but not asleep!  He lay on his side, his face towards her; lay with open eyes, staring at her.

Or had the light tricked her?  The light must have tricked her, for in the interval between the flash and the thunder, while she crouched quaking, he did not move or call.  The light must have deceived her.  She felt so certain of it that she found courage to remain where she was until another flash came and showed him sleeping with closed eyes.