“That’s horrible,” he said, and his voice suddenly rose to a scream.

“Hush!” Helene Vauquier whispered sharply.  “What’s the matter?”

“She fell against me—­her whole weight.  Oh!”

“You are afraid of her!”

“Yes, yes!” And in the darkness Wethermill’s voice came querulously between long breaths.  “Yes, now I am afraid of her!”

Helene Vauquier replied again contemptuously.  She spoke aloud and quite indifferently.  Nothing of any importance whatever, one would have gathered, had occurred.

“I will turn on the light,” she said.  And through the chinks in the curtain the bright light shone.  Celia heard a loud rattle upon the table, and then fainter sounds of the same kind.  And as a kind of horrible accompaniment there ran the laboured breathing of the man, which broke now and then with a sobbing sound.  They were stripping Mme. Dauvray of her pearl necklace, her bracelets, and her rings.  Celia had a sudden importunate vision of the old woman’s fat, podgy hands loaded with brilliants.  A jingle of keys followed.

“That’s all,” Helene Vauquier said.  She might have just turned out the pocket of an old dress.

There was the sound of something heavy and inert falling with a dull crash upon the floor.  A woman laughed, and again it was Helene Vauquier.

“Which is the key of the safe?” asked Adele.

And Helene Vauquier replied:-

“That one.”

Celia heard some one drop heavily into a chair.  It was Wethermill, and he buried his face in his hands.  Helene went over to him and laid her hand upon his shoulder and shook him.

“Do you go and get her jewels out of the safe,” she said, and she spoke with a rough friendliness.

“You promised you would blindfold the girl,” he cried hoarsely.

Helene Vauquier laughed.

“Did I?” she said.  “Well, what does it matter?” “There would have been no need to—­” And his voice broke off shudderingly.

“Wouldn’t there?  And what of us—­Adele and me?  She knows certainly that we are here.  Come, go and get the jewels.  The key of the door’s on the mantelshelf.  While you are away we two will arrange the pretty baby in there.”

She pointed to the recess; her voice rang with contempt.  Wethermill staggered across the room like a drunkard, and picked up the key in trembling fingers.  Celia heard it turn in the lock, and the door bang.  Wethermill had gone upstairs.

Celia leaned back, her heart fainting within her.  Arrange!  It was her turn now.  She was to be “arranged.”  She had no doubt what sinister meaning that innocent word concealed.  The dry, choking sound, the horrid scuffling of feet upon the floor, were in her ears.  And it had taken so long—­so terribly long!