“Oh, I can not!” declares Dora, shuddering violently.

“Then I shall go alone!”

As Florence says this, she takes up her candlestick and moves quickly toward the door.

“Stay, I will go,” cries Dora, trembling.  But a slight interruption occurring at this instant, they are compelled to wait for awhile.

Ethel Villiers, coming into the room to make her parting adieus to Mrs. Talbot, as she and her father intend leaving next morning, gazes anxiously from Florence to Dora, seeing plainly that there is something amiss.

“What is it?” she asks kindly, going up to Florence.

Miss Delmaine, after a little hesitation, encouraged by a glance at Dora’s terrified countenance, determines on taking the new-comer into their confidence.

In a few words she explains all that has taken place, and their suspicions.  Ethel, though paling beneath the horror and surprise occasioned by the recital, does not lose her self-possession.

“I will go with you,” she volunteers.  “But, let me say,” she adds, “that I think you are wrong in making this search without a man.  If—­if indeed we are still in time to be of any use to poor Sir Adrian—­always supposing he really is secreted in that terrible room—­I do not think any of us would be strong enough to help him down the stairs, and, if he has been slowly starving all this time, think how weak he will be!”

“Oh, what a wretched picture you conjure up!” exclaims Florence, nervously clasping her hands.  “But you are right, and now tell me who you think can best be depended upon in this crisis.”

“I am sure,” says Ethel, blushing slightly, but speaking with intense earnestness, “that, if you would not mind trusting Captain Ringwood, he would be both safe and useful.”

As this suggestion meets with approval, they manage to convey a message to the captain, and in a very few minutes he is with them, and is made acquainted with their hopes and fears.

Silently, cautiously, without any light, but carrying two small lamps ready for ignition, they go down to the corridor where is the door that leads to the secret staircase.

Turning the handle of this door, Captain Ringwood discovers that it is locked, but, nothing daunted, he pulls it so violently backward and forward that the lock, rusty with age, gives way, and leaves the passage beyond open to them.

Going into the small landing at the foot of the staircase, they close the door carefully behind them, and then, Captain Ringwood producing some matches, they light the two lamps and go swiftly, with anxiously beating hearts, up the stairs.

The second door is reached, and now nothing remains but to mount the last flight of steps and open the fatal door.

Their hearts at this trying moment almost fail them.  They look into one another’s blanched faces, and look there in vain for hope.  At last Ringwood, touching Ethel’s arm, says, in a whisper—­