“Is she hurt?” faltered Florence, stooping, herself, to listen.  “Can you hear anything—­anything?”

For an instant he did not answer; every faculty was absorbed in the one sense; then slowly and in gasps he began to mutter: 

“I think—­I hear—­something.  Her step—­no, no, no step.  All is as quiet as death; not a sound, not a breath—­she has fainted.  O God!  O God!  Why this calamity on top of all!”

He had sprung to his feet at the utterance this invocation, but next moment was down on knees again, listening—­listening.

Never was silence more profound; they were hearkening for murmurs from a tomb.  Florence began to sense the full horror of it all, and was swaying helplessly when Mr. Van Broecklyn impulsively lifted his hand in an admonitory Hush! and through the daze of her faculties a small far sound began to make itself heard, growing louder as she waited, then becoming faint again, then altogether ceasing only to renew itself once more, till it resolved into an approaching step, faltering in its course, but coming ever nearer and nearer.

“She’s safe!  She’s not hurt!” sprang from Florence’s lips in inexpressible relief; and expecting Mr. Van Broecklyn to show an equal joy, she turned towards him, with the cheerful cry

“Now if she has been so fortunate as to that missing page, we shall all be repaid for our fright.”

A movement on his part, a shifting of position which brought him finally to his feet, but he gave no other proof of having heard her, nor did his countenance mirror her relief.  “It is as if he dreaded, instead of hailed, her return,” was Florence’s inward comment as she watched him involuntarily recoil at each fresh token of Violet’s advance.

Yet because this seemed so very unnatural, she persisted in her efforts to lighten the situation, and when he made no attempt to encourage Violet in her approach, she herself stooped and called out a cheerful welcome which must have rung sweetly in the poor little detective’s ears.

A sorry sight was Violet, when, helped by Florence, she finally crawled into view through the narrow opening and stood once again on the cellar floor.  Pale, trembling, and soiled with the dust of years, she presented a helpless figure enough, till the joy in Florence’s face recalled some of her spirit, and, glancing down at her hand in which a sheet of paper was visible, she asked for Mr. Spielhagen.

“I’ve got the formula,” she said.  “If you will bring him, I will hand it over to him here.”

Not a word of her adventure; nor so much as one glance at Mr. Van Broecklyn, standing far back in the shadows.

Nor was she more communicative, when, the formula restored and everything made right with Mr. Spielhagen, they all came together again in the library for a final word.  “I was frightened by the silence and the darkness, and so cried out,” she explained in answer to their questions.  “Any one would have done so who found himself alone in so musty a place,” she added, with an attempt at lightsomeness which deepened the pallor on Mr. Van Broecklyn’s cheek, already sufficiently noticeable to have been remarked upon by more than one.