Sir Norman stood paralyzed. She half raised herself on her elbow,
drew the dagger from the wound, and a great jet of blood shot up and
crimsoned her hands. She did not faint--there seemed to be a deathless
energy within her that chained life strongly in its place--she only
pressed both hands hard over the wound, and looked mournfully and
reproachfully up in his face. Those beautiful, sad, solemn dyes, void of
everything savage and fierce, were truly Leoline's eyes now.
Through all his first shock of horror, another thing dawned on his
mind; he had looked on this scene before. It was the second view in La
Masque's caldron, and but one remained to be verified.
The next instant, he was down on his knees in a paroxysm of grief and
despair.
"What have I done? what have I done?" was his cry.
"Listen!" she said, faintly raising one finger. "Do you hear that?"
Distant steps were echoing along the passage. Yes; he heard them, and
knew what they were.
"They are coming to lead you to death!" she said, with some of her
old fire; "but I will baffle them yet. Take that lamp--go to the wall
yonder, and in that corner, near the floor, you will see a small iron
ring. Pull it--it does not require much force--and you will find an
opening leading through another vault; at the end there is a broken
flight of stairs, mount them, and you will find yourself in the same
place from which you fell. Fly, fly! There is not a second to lose!"
"How can I fly? how can I leave you dying here?"
"I am not dying!" she wildly cried, lifting both hands from the wound to
push him away, while the blood flowed over the floor. "But we will both
die if you stay. Go-go-go!"
The footsteps had paused st his door. The bolts were beginning to be
withdrawn. He lifted the lamp, flew across his prison, found the ring,
and took a pull at it with desperate strength. Part of what appeared
to be the solid wall drew out, disclosing an aperture through which he
could just squeeze sideways. Quick as thought he was through, forgetting
the lamp in his haste. The portion of the wall slid noiselessly back,
just as the prison door was thrown open, and the dwarfs voice was heard,
socially inviting him, like Mrs. Bond's ducks, to come and be killed.
Some people talk of darkness so palpable that it may be felt, and if
ever any one was qualified to tell from experience what it felt like,
Sir Norman was in that precise condition at that precise period.
He groped his way through the blind blackness along what seemed an
interminable distance, and stumbled, at last, over the broken stairs at
the end. With some difficult, and at the serious risk of his jugular,
he mounted them, and found himself, as Miranda had stated, in a place
he knew very well. Once here he allowed no grass to grow under him feet;
and, in five minutes after, to his great delight, he found himself where
he had never hoped to be again--in the serene moonlight and the open
air, fetterless and free.