Once in her own room she put out the light there, and knelt by the shut jalousies of the veranda--listening. She had heard something down-stairs; had laughed that Beryl might not hear it, too. Now, in the hush of the veiled moonlight, she heard it still. Some one was below her, in the garden, going round and round the house with a fevered eagerness, almost running. Holding her breath, she heard those quick, quick steps, and her blood grew chill. Who could be there? CHAPTER XIII. THE PATTERING FOOTSTEPS. In a less lonely place the governess would have thought nothing of those footsteps, but here she had been expressly told two things--there were no neighbors and there was danger abroad at night. “I wonder if I dare!” she thought, and peered through the slats of the jalousy. The moon was on the other side of the house; she could see that much, for this side was in deep shadow. No one below could possibly see if a jalousy were pushed out an inch or not. She unbolted the smallest division of the heavy hanging shutters, and noiselessly pushed it outward as far as she dared. All she could see was the strip of garden and shrubbery directly beneath her; darkly shadowed as it was she could not tell if there was any one there. “The night is dreadful in this place--dreadful!” she thought. “There might be devils behind every bush. The very moonlight is not like the good, clear light I know. Mr. Egerton need not have warned me not to go out--nothing would take me into those dreadful shadows, that veiled, honey-colored light.” The heavy jalousy tired her wrist, in another minute she must let it go, and so far had learned nothing. She had known down in the drawing-room that some person or thing was outside. Nothing moved now in the stirless garden--those strangely light, quick steps had ceased. But out of the quiet another sound and a nearer smote on her senses, a creaking as of wood rubbing on wood. Her aching wrist forgotten, she peered through the crack, and with horror, for the creepers were swaying below her. Some one was climbing up! Somehow, she shut the jalousy, bolted it and got back into her room. Something noiseless, light, a darker shadow against the dark, clung for an instant to the very shutter she had just closed, clung and was gone. She heard the quick slither of it as it went down the creepers, but whether it had been man or beast she could not tell. Her terror had taken her to the opposite wall of the room, that she might at least have something solid behind her back, and for a long minute she stood there, sick with the horror of the thing.