These two had their backs to her, the third his face; and it was the sight of this third man which had driven the blood to her heart.

He ended at the waist! It was only after a few seconds, it was only when she had gazed at him awhile in speechless horror, that he rose another foot from the floor, and she saw that he had paused in the act of ascending through a trapdoor.

What the scene meant, who these men were, or what their entrance portended, with these questions her brain refused at the moment to grapple.

It was much that--still remembering who might hear her, and what she held--she did not shriek aloud.
Instead, she stood in the gloom at her end of the passage, gazing with all her eyes until she had seen the third man step clear of the trap.

She could see him; but the light intervened and blurred his view of her.