There was a moment's pause before she answered him, faltering:
"N-no. I saw nothing." Sir Terence's straining ears caught no
faintest sound of the voice that had prompted her urgently from
behind the curtained windows.
"How long have you been there?" he asked her.
"A - a moment only," she replied, again after a pause. "I - I
thought I heard a cry, and - and I came to see what had happened."
Her voice shook with terror; but what she beheld would have been
quite enough to account for that.
The guard filed in through the doors from the official quarters,
a sergeant with a halbert in one hand and a lantern in the other,
followed by four men, and lastly by Mullins. They halted and came
to attention before Sir Terence. And almost at the same moment
there was a sharp rattling knock on the wicket in the great closed
gates through which Samoval had entered. Startled, but without
showing any signs of it, Sir Terence bade Mullins go open, and in
a general silence all waited to see who it was that came.
A tall man, bowing his shoulders to pass under the low lintel of
that narrow door, stepped over the sill and into the courtyard. He
wore a cocked hat, and as his great cavalry cloak fell open the
yellow rays of the sergeant's lantern gleamed faintly on a British
uniform.
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