The house had not been dismantled, although things had at different
times been taken from it, and when Donal opened a leaf of shutter,
he saw tables and chairs and cabinets inlaid with silver and ivory.
The room looked stately, but everything was deep in dust; carpets
and curtains were thick with the deserted sepulchres of moths; and
the air somehow suggested a tomb: Donal thought of the tombs of the
kings of Egypt before ravaging conquerors broke into them, when they
were yet full of all such gorgeous furniture as great kings desired,
against the time when the souls should return to reanimate the
bodies so carefully spiced and stored to welcome them, and the great
kings would be themselves again, with the added wisdom of the dead
and judged. Conscious of a curious timidity, feeling a kind of
awesomeness about every form in the room, he stepped softly to the
bureau, applied its key, and following carefully the directions the
earl had given him, for the lock was Italian, with more than one
quip and crank and wanton wile about it, succeeded in opening it. He
had no difficulty in finding its secret place, nor the packet
concealed in it; but just as he laid his hands on it, he was aware
of a swift passage along the floor without, past the door of the
room, and apparently up the next stair. There was nothing he could
distinguish as footsteps, or as the rustle of a dress; it seemed as
if he had heard but a disembodied motion! He darted to the door,
which he had by habit closed behind him, and opened it noiselessly.
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