Instead of accepting the confession of her misfortune as the final barrier between them, he had taken it as the key that had unlocked the chains of her bondage.  If she had told him the truth—­if this were what separated them—­she belonged to him; and he wanted to tell her this again before he slept, and hear from her lips the words that would give her to him forever.

Despairing of this, he opened the door to his room.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Scarcely had he crossed the threshold when an exclamation of surprise rose to Philip’s lips.  A few minutes before he had left his room even uncomfortably warm.  A cold draught of air struck his face now, and the light was out.  He remembered that he had left the lamp burning.  He groped his way through the darkness to the table before he lighted a match.

As he touched the flame to the wick he glanced toward the window.  It was open.  A film of snow had driven through and settled upon the rug under it.  Replacing the chimney, he took a step or two toward the window.  Then he stopped, and stared at the floor.  Some one had entered his room through the open window and had gone to the door opening into the hall.  At each step had fallen a bit of snow, and close to the door was a space of the bare floor soppy and stained.  At that point the intruder had stood for some moments without moving.

For several seconds Philip stared at the evidences of a prowling visitor without making a move himself.  It was not without a certain thrill of uneasiness that he went to the window and closed it.  It did not take him long to assure himself that nothing in the room had been touched.  He could find no other marks of feet except those which led directly from the window to the door, and this fact was sufficient proof that whoever had visited his room had come as a listener and a spy and not as a thief.

It occurred to Philip now that he had found his door unlatched and slightly ajar when he entered.  That the eavesdropper had seen them in the hall and had possibly overheard a part of their conversation he was quite certain from the fact that the window had been left open in a hurried flight.

For some time the impulse was strong in him to acquaint both Josephine and her father with what had happened, and with Jean Croisset’s apparent treachery.  He did not need to ask himself if it was the half-breed who had stolen into his room.  He was as certain of that as he was of the identity of the face he had seen at the window some time before.  And yet something held him from communicating these events of the night to the master of Adare House and the girl.  He was becoming more and more convinced that there existed an unaccountable and mysterious undercurrent of tragic possibilities at Adare House of which Josephine was almost ignorant, and her father entirely so.  Josephine’s motherhood and the secret she was guarding were not the only things that were clouding his mental horizon now.  There was something else.  And he believed that Jean was the key to the situation.