47

What should she do? Should she fling open the window and call out? No, for that would scare the burglars away, if burglars they were.

Lily listened again, intently, and after what seemed to her a long, long time, she heard the window below closing to, very quietly. Then came the sound of footsteps—it seemed to her more than one pair of footsteps—padding softly away across the lawn into the wood. Then followed a curious, long-drawn-out sound—so faint that she had to strain her ears to hear it at all.

She gave a stifled cry—something had suddenly loomed up on the broad ledge the other side of the closed window. It was the big cat Mimi—Mimi dragging herself along by the window-pane and purring, her green eyes gleaming coldly, wickedly, in the night air.

Frightened and unnerved, Lily turned and felt her way through the dark room to the bed. She might at least wake Cristina, and tell her what she had heard. She put out her hand, and felt the smooth, low pillow—then slowly her fingers travelled down, and to her intense surprise she realised that the bed was empty, and that it had not been slept in that night.

Then she had made a mistake in thinking this room was Cristina’s room? She stood and listened—there was not a sound to be heard now, an eerie silence filled the house.

She suddenly made up her mind she would do nothing till the morning. It would annoy the Countess were she to make a fuss now. Already Lily was a little afraid of Aunt Cosy. If her money was indeed gone, then it was gone! Nothing they could do at this time of night would be of any use.

She walked gropingly across to the door, her eyes by now 48accustomed to the darkness, and so into the passage. Pushing open her own door, she quietly shut it. Then she went over to her window and, parting the curtains, took a deep draught of the delicious southern night air. It was extraordinarily and uncannily still and dark on that side of La Solitude.

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She lay down and was soon in a deep, if troubled sleep.

When Lily Fairfield awoke the next morning she experienced the curious sensation of not knowing in the least where she was. What strange, bare, gloomy room was this? The very little she could see of it was illuminated by a shaft of dull morning light filtering through the top of the heavy velvet and silk curtains drawn 

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