“No,” said Alice, smiling—­she had schooled herself by this time to speak of him carelessly.  “I was too much frightened to thank him on the spot, and now it would be ancient history.  We must save our thanks till we see him.”

“I want to see him about other things.  You must write and ask him to dinner to-morrow or next day.”

“Don’t you think he would like it better if you would write?”

“There you are again—­as if it mattered.  Write that ‘Mamma bids me.’  There, your hair is braided.  Write the note now, and I will send it over in the morning before he gets away.”

Alice rose and walked to her escritoire, her long robe trailing, her thick braids hanging almost to the floor, her fair cheek touched with a delicate spot of color at the thought of writing a formal note to the man she worshipped.  She took a pen and wrote “My dear Mr. Farnham,” and the conventional address made her heart flutter and her eyes grow dim.  While she was writing, she heard her mother say: 

“What a joke!”

She looked up, and saw that Mrs. Belding, having pushed open the shutters, had picked up her opera-glass and was looking through it at something out of the window.

“Do you know, Alice,” she said, laughing, “since that ailantus tree was cut down, you can see straight into his library from here.  There he is now, sitting at his desk.”

“Mamma!” pleaded Alice, rising and trying to take the glass away from her.  “Don’t do that, I beg!”

“Nonsense,” said her mother, keeping her away with one hand and holding the glass with the other.  “There comes Budsey to close the blinds.  The show is over.  No; he goes away, leaving them open.”

“Mamma, I will leave the room if——­”

“My goodness! look at that!” cried the widow, putting the glass in her daughter’s hand and sinking into a chair with fright.

Alice, filled with a nameless dread, saw her mother was pale and trembling, and took the glass.  She dropped it in an instant, and leaning from the window sent forth once more that cry of love and alarm, which rang through the stillness of night with all the power of her young throat: 

“Arthur!”

She turned, and sped down the stairs, and across the lawn like an arrow shot for life or death from a long-bow.

Farnham heard the sweet, strong voice ringing out of the stillness like the cry of an angel in a vision, and raised his head with a startled movement from the desk where he was writing.  Offitt heard it, too, as he raised his hand to strike a deadly blow; and though it did not withhold him from his murderous purpose, it disturbed somewhat the precision of his hand.  The hammer descended a little to the right of where he had intended to strike.  It made a deep and cruel gash, and felled Farnham to the floor, but it did not kill him.  He rose, giddy and faint with the blow and half-blinded with the blood that poured down over his right eye.  He clapped his hand, with a soldier’s instinct, to the place where his sword-hilt was not, and then staggered, rather than rushed, at his assailant, to grapple him with his naked hands.  Offitt struck him once more, and he fell headlong on the floor, in the blaze of a myriad lights that flashed all at once into deep darkness and silence.