She ran to the door and began to beat on its panels. By this time, she knew it would be no use and yet she beat with her hands until they were bruised and then she snatched up a book and beat with that. She thought she must have been beating half an hour when she realized that someone was standing outside in the corridor, and the someone said, in a voice she recognized as belonging to the leering footman, “May as well keep still, Miss. You can’t hammer it down and no one’s going to bother taking any notice,” and then his footsteps retired down the stairs. She involuntarily clenched her hurt hands and the shuddering began again though she stood in the middle of the room with a rigid body and her head thrown fiercely back. “If there are people in the world as hideous—and monstrous as _this_—let them kill me if they want to. I would rather be killed than live! They would _have_ to kill me!” and she said it in a frenzy of defiance of all mad and base things on earth. Her peril seemed to force her thought to delve into unknown dark places in her memory and dig up horrors she had forgotten—newspaper stories of crime, old melodramas and mystery romances, in which people disappeared and were long afterwards found buried under floors or in cellars. It was said that the Berford Place houses, winch were old ones, had enormous cellars under them. “Perhaps other girls have disappeared and now are buried in the cellars,” she thought. And the dreadful young voice added aloud. “Because they would _have_ to kill me.” One of the Persian kittens curled up in the basket wakened because he heard it and stretched a sleepy paw and mewed at her. Coombe House was one of the old ones, wearing somewhat the aspect of a stately barrack with a fine entrance. Its court was enclosed at the front by a stone wall, outside which passing London roared in low tumult. The court was surrounded by a belt of shrubs strong enough to defy the rain of soot which fell quietly upon them day and night. The streets were already lighted for the evening when Mademoiselle Vallé presented herself at the massive front door and asked for Lord Coombe. The expression of her face, and a certain intensity of manner, caused the serious-looking head servant, who wore no livery, to come forward instead of leaving her to the footmen. “His lordship engaged with—a business person—and must not be disturbed,” he said. “He is also going out.” “He will see me,” replied Mademoiselle Vallé. “If you give him this card he will see me.” She was a plainly dressed woman, but she had a manner which removed her entirely from the class of those who merely came to importune. There was absolute certainty in the eyes she fixed with steadiness on the man’s face. He took her card, though he hesitated. “If he does not see me,” she added, “he will be very much displeased.” “Will you come in, ma’am, and take a seat for a moment?” he ventured. “I will inquire.”