Silence fell; there was not a sound but the hard tap of the dice on the backgammon-board and the rustle of the cards as they were played, while Constance, Adeline, Emilie and Mathilde read or worked, and the evening hours in the soft light of the sitting-room dozed away as with soft-trailing minutes and quarters, dull reflexions in the mirrors, faint lamplight on the furniture and the rhythmical ticking of the clock in the almost entire silence, broken only now and again by an occasional word, at the card-table, or when Guy said:
"It's blowing . . . and thawing. . . . There'll be no skating to-morrow. . . ."
A piercing scream rang through the house; and the scream so suddenly and unexpectedly penetrated the silence of the stairs and passages of the great house, outside the room in which they were sitting, that all of them started, suddenly:
"What's that? . . . What's that? . . ."
They all sprang up; the cards, thanks to Gerdy's fright, fell on the floor, and lay flat with their gaudy pictures. When Van der Welcke opened the door, there was no longer any draught; the maids were running into the hall, anxiously, through the open door of the kitchen. Everybody asked questions at once. They heard Addie come down a staircase; and the hurried creaking of his firm step on the stairs reassured the women. They called out to him, he to them; and, amid their confusion, they at last heard his voice, clearly:
"Help me! . . . Here! . . ."
"Where? . . ."
"On the stairs."
They ran up the stairs.
"On the back-staircase!" they heard him call.
And Constance saw that the partition door was standing ajar at the end of the long passage. She
