She was not ashamed or embarrassed; she even felt, with a slight pride, that she was not blushing.

She raised her eyes frankly.

What she WOULD have said she did not know, for the door, which he had closed behind her, began to shake violently.
It was not the fear of some angry intrusion or interference surely that made him drop her hand instantly.

It was not--her second thought--the idea that some one had fallen in a fit against it that blanched his face with abject and unreasoning terror! It must have been something else that caused him to utter an inarticulate cry and dash out of the room and down the stairs like a madman! What had happened?
In her own self-possession she knew that all this was passing rapidly, that it was not the door now that was still shaking, for it had swung almost shut again--but it was the windows, the book-shelves, the floor beneath her feet, that were all shaking.

She heard a hurried scrambling, the trampling of feet below, and the quick rustling of a skirt in the passage, as if some one had precipitately fled from her room.