At the ringing of this shrill bell Rose shuddered like a maniac, and grovelled on her knees to Raynal, and seized his very knees and implored him to show some pity.

“O sir! kill us! we are culpable”—­

Dring! dring! dring! dring! dring! pealed the baroness’s bell again.

“But do not tell our mother.  Oh, if you are a man! do not! do not!  Show us some pity.  We are but women.  Mercy! mercy! mercy!”

“Speak out then,” groaned Raynal.  “What does this mean?  Why has my wife swooned at sight of me?—­whose is this child?”

“Whose?” stammered Rose.  Till he said that, she never thought there could be a doubt whose child.

Dring! dring! dring! dring! dring!

“Oh, my God!” cried the poor girl, and her scared eyes glanced every way like some wild creature looking for a hole, however small, to escape by.

Edouard, seeing her hesitation, came down on her other side.  “Whose is the child, Rose?” said he sternly.

“You, too?  Why were we born? mercy! oh! pray let me go to my sister.”

Dring! dring! dring! dring! dring! went the terrible bell.

The men were excited to fury by Rose’s hesitation; they each seized an arm, and tore her screaming with fear at their violence, from her knees up to her feet between them with a single gesture.

“Whose is the child?”

“You hurt me!” said she bitterly to Edouard, and she left crying and was terribly calm and sullen all in a moment.

“Whose is the child?” roared Edouard and Raynal, in one raging breath.  “Whose is the child?”

“It is mine.”

CHAPTER XX.

These were not words; they were electric shocks.

The two arms that gripped Rose’s arms were paralyzed, and dropped off them; and there was silence.

Then first the thought of all she had done with those three words began to rise and grow and surge over her.  She stood, her eyes turned downwards, yet inwards, and dilating with horror.

Silence.

Now a mist began to spread over her eyes, and in it she saw indistinctly the figure of Raynal darting to her sister’s side, and raising her head.

She dared not look round on the other side.  She heard feet stagger on the floor.  She heard a groan, too; but not a word.

Horrible silence.

With nerves strung to frenzy, and quivering ears, that magnified every sound, she waited for a reproach, a curse; either would have been some little relief.  But no! a silence far more terrible.

Then a step wavered across the room.  Her soul was in her ear.  She could hear and feel the step totter, and it shook her as it went.  All sounds were trebled to her.  Then it struck on the stone step of the staircase, not like a step, but a knell; another step, another and another; down to the very bottom.  Each slow step made her head ring and her heart freeze.