“What’s the matter with Mrs. Quintard?” she hurriedly asked.  “If it were night, I should think that she was in one of her spells.”

Violet started and glanced where Hetty pointed.  Mrs. Quintard was within a few feet of them, but as oblivious of their presence as though she stood alone in the room.  Possibly, she thought she did.  With fixed eyes and mechanical step she began to move straight towards the table, her whole appearance of a nature to make Hetty’s blood run cold, but to cause that of Violet’s to bound through her veins with renewed hope.

“The one thing I could have wished!” she murmured under her breath.  “She has fallen into a trance.  She is again under the dominion of her idea.  If we watch and do not disturb her she may repeat her action of last night, and herself show where she has put this precious document.”

Meanwhile Mrs. Quintard continued to advance.  A moment more, and her smooth white locks caught the ruddy glow centred upon the chair standing in the hollow of the table.  Words were leaving her lips, and her hand, reaching out over the blotter, groped among the articles scattered there till it settled on a large pair of shears.

“Listen,” muttered Violet to the woman pressing close to her side.  “You are acquainted with her voice; catch what she says if you can.”

Hetty could not; an undistinguishable murmur was all that came to her ears.

Violet took a step nearer.  Mrs. Quintard’s hand had left the shears and was hovering uncertainly in the air.  Her distress was evident.  Her head, no longer steady on her shoulders, was turning this way and that, and her tones becoming inarticulate.

“Paper!  I want paper” burst from her lips in a shrill unnatural cry.

But when they listened for more and watched to see the uncertain hand settle somewhere, she suddenly came to herself and turned upon them a startled glance, which speedily changed into one of the utmost perplexity.

“What am I doing here?” she asked.  “I have a feeling as if I had almost seen—­almost touched—­oh, it’s gone! and all is blank again.  Why couldn’t I keep it till I knew—­” Then she came wholly to herself and, forgetting even the doubts of a moment since, remarked to Violet in her old tremulous fashion: 

“You asked us to pull down the books?  But you’ve evidently thought better of it.”

“Yes, I have thought better of it.”  Then, with a last desperate hope of re-arousing the visions lying somewhere back in Mrs. Quintard’s troubled brain, Violet ventured to observe:  “This is likely to resolve itself into a psychological problem, Mrs. Quintard.  Do you suppose that if you fell again into the condition of last night, you would repeat your action and so lead us yourself to where the will lies hidden?”

“Possibly; but it may be weeks before I walk again in my sleep, and meanwhile Carlos will have arrived, and Clement, possibly, died.  My nephew is so low that the doctor is coming back at midnight.  Miss Strange, Clement is a man in a thousand.  He says he wants to see you.  Would you be willing to accompany me to his room for a moment?  He will not make many more requests and I will take care that the interview is not prolonged.”