Tchigorsky rose and yawned, but Geoffrey would fain have had more. "The princess," he said; "at least tell me if I know her." "Of course you do. Princess Zara is the woman who calls herself Mrs. Mona May." CHAPTER XXXIII VERA SEES SOMETHING It was nearing dawn when Vera came to herself out of an uneasy slumber. The darkest hour that precedes the faint flush in the eastern sky was moving away. There was a light in the room. Vera rubbed her eyes wondering. It was one of her fancies to have no light in her room. Better to lie with horrors she could not see than have the glimmer from a nightlight filling every corner with threatening shadows. Vera sat up in bed, forgetting for the moment that she had a racking headache. Something had happened while she slept. Something was always happening in that house of fears, so that Vera was conscious of no new alarm. In a big easy chair at the foot of the bed Marion reclined, fast asleep. Vera checked an impulse to wake her. In that miserable household sleep was the most blessed of all luxuries. Why, then, should Marion be disturbed? Doubtless she had come there to protect and, doubtless the girl would know all about it in the morning. "I will not wake her," Vera murmured. But she could not sleep herself. The splitting, blinding headache was very much in evidence just now. Vera felt that she would give anything for a glass of cold spring water. She poured out that in her own bottle, but it was flat and tepid. She would go down into the stone-flagged outer kitchen, where the pump was, and get some fresh. In any case, she had not the least idea of going to bed again. Vera partly dressed herself, doing up her hair in a big shining knot, and then, in slippered feet, crept down to the kitchen. She had no need of a light--there was already enough to show the way. How cool and refreshing the water was! She drank a glass and then laved her face in the crystal fluid. All headache was gone by this time, though Vera had a curious trembling of her lower limbs that she could not account for. She opened a side door leading into a green quadrangle, and from there made her way to the terrace. For a few minutes she stood in a dark angle facing the house, just picked out, as it was, from the gloom. Along the dim corridor some one was advancing with a light. What could it mean? What was going on? Vera crouched close into the dark corner. She had an idea that she was going to witness something. The light in the corridor stopped and grew brighter. From the black shadow of the house a human figure crept out and slid along the terrace to a spot where it was just possible for a man of strong courage and cool head to make his way down to the beach at low tide. At high water the sea swept the foot of the cliff.