"Oh, my lady, I was almost frightened to death! I knew that I was too light and small to cope with the robber, as I then thought him, but I had just enough sense left not to cry out, or make a noise. I ran swiftly and silently away out into the corridor where I met a gentleman going up into his room. I begged him to follow me at once, and he did so without a word. And, oh, my lady, we were not an instant too soon!" Elsie covers her face with her hands and shivers at the thought. "She was about to murder me. I saw and knew all, though I could not move nor speak," exclaimed Countess Vera. "She was, indeed, about to murder you," returns the maid. "She had crept from her corner and was standing over your bed with a shining dagger raised over you. Your night-dress had become unfastened at the throat, and your breast was bare. She was about to strike when your rescuer ran swiftly in and whirled her away from the bed, and the dagger fell on the floor. Oh, my dear lady, it is horrible how near you came to being killed," cries the faithful maid, bursting into floods of tears at the dreadful thought. "But for you, my faithful girl, I should now be dead," the countess answers, deeply moved. "You shall be generously rewarded. But now tell me who was the gentleman that so opportunely came to your assistance?" Elsie looks embarrassed, but Lady Clive comes to the rescue. "We did not mean that you should know, dear," she says, "but I might have guessed that you would never rest until you knew. So I will tell you. It was Philip." Lady Vera turns from deathly white to rosy red at that magic name. "But he went away," she says, wonderingly. "I know--he was down in the country visiting a friend. Last night he came in after you had retired, and he expected to go in the morning before you came down." "Next to Elsie, I owe him my life," Lady Vera says, softly, as if there were a subtle pleasure in the thought, "and that dreadful woman--is she gone?" "Marcia Cleveland? No, indeed. She is in the dressing-room, securely bound, and guarded by Philip and Sir Harry." "I should like to see her," Lady Vera observes, after a moment's thought. "But first, Elsie, I should like my dressing-gown and slippers." And wrapped in the soft, blue robe, with her splendid, golden hair floating loosely over her shoulders, like a shining veil, Lady Vera enters the presence of her enemy, closely followed by Lady Clive and Elsie, who guard her with nervous care on either side. Marcia Cleveland, crouching like a baffled tigress, in the bonds they have cast around her, lifts her eyes and glowers with deadly rage and hate at the beautiful young girl. CHAPTER XXXII. For a moment there is complete silence, while the wicked and vindictive woman glares with all the bitterness of baffled hate and vengeance upon her beautiful foe who had so nearly been her victim. The Lady Vera speaks in a tone of cold and withering contempt: