Then she remembered the electric bell near the fireplace in the sitting room. There was one by the fireplace here, also. No, she would ring the one in the sitting room. She went to it and pressed the button. She could not hear the ghost of a sound and one could generally hear _something_ like one. She rang again and waited. The room was getting darker. Oh, how _could_ Fräulein Hirsch—how could she? She waited—she waited. Fifteen minutes by her little watch—twenty minutes—and, in their passing, she rang again. She rang the bell in the library and the one in the bedroom—even the one in the bathroom, lest some might be out of order. She slowly ceased to be embarrassed and self-reproachful and began to feel afraid, though she did not know quite what she was afraid of. She went to one of the windows to look at her watch again in the vanishing light, and saw that she had been ringing the bells for an hour. She automatically put up a hand and leaned against the white frame of one of the decorative small panes of glass. As she touched it, she vaguely realized that it was of such a solidity that it felt, not like wood but iron. She drew her hand away quickly, feeling a sudden sweep of unexplainable fear—yes, it was FEAR. And why should she so suddenly feel it? She went back to the door and tried again to open it—as ineffectively as before. Then she began to feel a little cold and sick. She returned to the Chesterfield and sat down on it helplessly. “It seems as if—I had been locked in!” she broke out, in a faint, bewildered wail of a whisper. “Oh, _why_—did they lock the doors!” CHAPTER XXII She had known none of the absolute horrors of life which were possible in that underworld which was not likely to touch her own existence in any form. “Why,” had argued Mademoiselle Vallé, “should one fill a white young mind with ugly images which would deface with dark marks and smears, and could only produce unhappiness and, perhaps, morbid broodings? One does not feel it is wise to give a girl an education in crime. One would not permit her to read the Newgate Calendar for choice. She will be protected by those who love her and what she must discover she will discover. That is Life.” Which was why her first discovery that neither door could be opened, did not at once fill her with horror. Her first arguments were merely those of a girl who, though her brain was not inactive pulp, had still a protected girl’s outlook. She had been overwhelmed by a sense of the awkwardness of her position and by the dread that she would be obliged to disturb and, almost inevitably, embarrass and annoy Lady Etynge. Of course, there had been some bungling on the part of the impudent footman—perhaps actually at the moment when he had given his sidelong leer at herself instead of properly attending to what he was trying to do. That the bedroom was locked might be the result of a dozen ordinary reasons.