There he lay crouched up in the balcony, pretty well shaded by its stone work and parapet from any further observation from without. He breathed in rather an agitated manner for a few moments, for he had undergone, to tell the truth, very great personal exertion. Soon, however, he recovered sufficiently to assist him in going on in his enterprise; and accordingly, sidling along very carefully till he got quite close to the window, he cautiously tried if it were fast. No. It yielded to a touch. ‘More good fortune,’ thought he. Slowly, for it took a good five minutes to do, thinking that any noise now occasioned by precipitation would be fatal to him and his project, he got the window open about a couple of feet. He put his hand into the room, and felt that there was a table close to the window. By carefully moving his hand and arm horizontally from left to right and from right to left, he found there was nothing on the table but a glass of water, in which were some flowers. In order to get it out of the way, he lifted the glass into the balcony, and placed it carefully in one corner out of the way. Then it was that the audacious Blodget, like an oily snake, slid into the room through the partially open window, and was fairly within the apartment. His next step was to remove the table from before the window, and to open the window itself very much wider—in fact, as wide as it would possibly go. Then it was that he saw where the faint light had come from that was in the room. A little oil night-light was on a bracket fixed to the wall of the room. That light, although very small in itself, was yet sufficient to dissipate the darkness that was in the place, and by it Blodget with great satisfaction looked around him, and was quite convinced that he was in the suite of rooms in the occupation of Inez. There was one circumstance that to him was quite convincing on that head, for on the chimney-piece was a small but finely painted miniature of Monteagle. ‘Yes,’ whispered Blodget, as he drew a long breath, ‘I am on the right scent now.’ Immediately opposite to the window there was a door that seemed to lead to the next apartment. It was a very ticklish thing indeed to open that door. Before he could at all make up his mind to do so, he tried to peep through the key-hole of it, but, unfortunately, there was on the other side a piece of pendant brass that blocked it up, so he saw nothing. Delay, though, to him now was something worse than danger—it might be fatal; so with a feeling almost of desperation, he turned the handle of the door and opened it. It led into a room that was, like the last one, dimly lighted by a night-lamp in a niche in the wall. ‘She is fond of light,’ thought Blodget. There was a door in the side wall of this room, and that door was a little way open. Through it Blodget could see the bed-curtain. The room in which she was, constituted the dressing-room to the bed-room further on.