The room was furnished with all the appliances which wealth could supply, or taste could suggest. Every piece of furniture in that elegant apartment was of the choicest and rarest manufacture. It seemed to the enhanced eyes of the robber to be the personification of a Paphian bower――at once bewitching, poetic, and almost fabulous. On the mantel-piece was a small clock of rare workmanship. This elegant timepiece was set with jewels, which sparkled and scintillated beneath the rays of his lantern. Each picture that hung upon the walls was a perfect gem. The chairs were covered with brocaded silk, and the articles of _virtu_ observable in almost every part of the bedchamber were too numerous to particularise. It will suffice to note that they served to make up an _ensemble_ perfectly unique. But all these things paled before the lustre and beauty of the sleeper. Much has been said about the might and majesty of beauty, and no one will deny that a lovely woman is nature’s crown of triumph. She is, beyond all else, the fairest thing in the creation. Charles Peace was touched. He longed to clasp in his arms the fair maiden who was slumbering so tranquilly. He had, whilst gazing on her, almost forgotten the purport of his visit to the mill-owner’s villa; but was in a measure reminded of the same when he looked at the various articles in the room. Creeping forward he sought to gain possession of the gold watch on its stand by the toilette-table. He moved forward a step or two, but suddenly became motionless again, as the sleeper heaved a soft sigh and shifted slightly her position. She did not, however, awaken, but the motion revealed something more of her charms. The heart of the burglar beat audibly. He hesitated how to act. Grasping with his right hand the revolver he invariably carried with him, he watched the maiden with the eyes of a lynx. Not that he meant doing her any harm. He hardly knew what he meant. For a time he was subdued, but the greed of gain returned to him, and he placed his hand upon the watch. “No,” he murmured, after a pause, “I will take nothing of her’s――nothing.” “I am well repaid by looking at one so lovely.” He withdrew his hand from the watch and retreated some two or three steps backwards towards the door of the room. Then he became immovable again. “This will never do,” he muttered. “If I go on like this I shall run the chance of being discovered; and how then? No, I must away at once, and yet, hang it, she is so very beautiful!” He again rivetted his eyes on the form of the sleeper, upon which he once or twice cast the rays of his lantern. “I’m a weak, silly fool to be overcome thus――an idiot. Bah! there must be an end to it.”