Still, though she thus strove to regain courage, her anxiety induced her
to do what otherwise she would never have attempted. She approached the
little door by which the doctor had disappeared, and applied her ear to
it. She held her breath, and listened, but heard nothing.

Suddenly, a dull, heavy sound, like that of a falling body, was audible
just above her head; she thought she could even distinguish a stifled
moaning. Raising her eyes, hastily, she saw some particles of the plaster
fall from the ceiling, loosened, no doubt, by the shaking of the floor
above.

No longer able to resist the feeling of terror, Adrienne ran to the door
by which she had entered with the doctor, in order to call some one. To
her great surprise, she found it was fastened on the outside. Yet, since
her arrival, she had heard no sound of a key turning in the lock.

More and more alarmed, the young girl flew to the little door by which
the physician had disappeared, and at which she had just been listening.
This door also was fastened on the outside.

Still, wishing to struggle with the terror which was gaining invincibly
upon her, Adrienne called to her aid all the firmness of her character,
and tried to argue away her fears.

"I must have been deceived." she said; "it was only a fall that I heard.
The moaning had no existence, except in my imagination. There are a
thousand reasons for believing that it was not a person who fell down.
But, then, these locked doors? They, perhaps, do not know that I am here;
they may have thought that there was nobody in this room."