Kitabı oku: «The Tiger Lily», sayfa 9
Chapter Twenty One.
The Ruse
There was a puzzled look in Lady Grayson’s face as Dale sprang at the Conte, and swung him round, sending him staggering from the door, before which he placed himself, his face dark with wrath.
For the moment, the Italian looked utterly astounded. Then, with a fierce ejaculation, he made at Dale with his cane raised, and his countenance convulsed.
“Dog!” he muttered in Italian; and the artist clenched his fist, ready to proceed to any extremities now in Lady Dellatoria’s defence.
But Lady Grayson flew between them, whispering to the Conte eagerly, and Dale caught a word or two here and there —
“Scandal – mistake – my sake – meet her now.” The Conte drew himself up and pressed Lady Grayson’s hand, as he gave her a significant look. Then, veiling his anger with a peculiar smile, he turned to Dale.
“Lady Grayson is right,” he said, with grave courtesy; “it was a mistake. I was quite in the wrong, Mr Dale. I ought not to have attempted to break in upon your privacy. We all have our little secrets, eh? There, it is quite past. An accident, that Lady Dellatoria should be calling now when we are here?”
“Yes – a very strange accident,” said Lady Grayson, with a malicious look at the artist.
“It does not matter,” continued the Count. “All this contretemps because ladies are vain enough to wish the world to see how beautiful they are. But she is long coming, this wife of mine.”
No one spoke for a few moments, all standing listening for the steps upon the stairs, and the rustling sound of the Contessa’s dress, but everything was perfectly still, and at last, with a shrug of the shoulders, the Conte turned to Armstrong.
“Is the lady in some ante-room waiting for our departure?”
“No,” said Dale sharply.
“Because we would relieve you of our company, but we would rather meet the lady now.”
“Of course,” cried Lady Grayson. “We do not wish our visit to be misconstrued.”
“I do not understand it,” said Dale; and going to the bell, he rang sharply. Then once more there was silence, till shuffling steps were heard, then a tap at the door, and Keren-Happuch entered in answer to a loud “Come in,” wiping her hands upon her apron, and with her face scarlet.
“Where is the lady you announced just now?” said Dale sharply.
“Plee, sir, she’s gone, sir.”
“Gone?”
“Yes, sir.”
Lady Grayson uttered a low sigh of satisfaction.
“What did she say?”
“Nothin’, sir.”
“Did you tell her that this lady and gentleman were here?”
“Oh no, sir. I never said nothin’ to her, sir.”
“But she said she would call again?”
“That she didn’t, sir. She couldn’t. She just comed and goed,” faltered the girl.
“But did she not hear our voices in the studio?”
“No, sir; she couldn’t. Why, she never come no further than the street-door mat, and you can’t hear no talking in here, even if you stand just outside.”
“Oh, you have tried?” said the Conte laughingly. “That I hain’t, sir, but I’ve seed missus more’n once.”
“That will do.”
“Yes, sir,” said Keren-Happuch, but Dale checked her.
“Don’t go,” he said.
“Ah, well then, Mr Dale, as the lady is not coming up to see us, we will go and see her: Mahomet to the mountain, eh! my dear Lady Grayson? May I see you to your carriage?”
“I have no carriage here,” she said quickly. “Yes, we had better go.”
“After our double failure to-day; but Mr Dale will alter his decision on our behalf. Good day, my dear modern representative of Fra Lippo Lippi. It is grand to be a handsome young artist,” the Conte continued, as he took a step toward the dais, and raised something on the end of his cane, “supplicated by beautiful ladies to transfer their features to canvas; but you should warn them not to leave their veils behind when they take refuge in another room. Look, my dear Lady Grayson;” and he held the veil toward her on the end of his cane, “thick – secretive – admirable for a disguise. – Come.”
He tossed the veil back on to the dais, and opened the door for his companion to pass out, while Dale stood fuming with rage, and Lady Grayson gave him a mocking look as he advanced.
“Good morning, Mr Dale,” she said laughingly, and then in a whisper – “secret for secret, my handsome friend. You and I cannot play at telling tales out of school.”
“Lor’, if it ain’t like being at the theayter,” thought Keren-Happuch, as the door was shut, and Dale crossed quickly to reopen it, and stand listening till the front door closed. Then he came back to where the little maid stood waiting, while, faintly heard, came a call from below.
“Keren – Hap – puch!”
“Comin’, mum. Please, Mr Dale, sir, missus is a callin’ of me; may I go?”
“Who was the lady who came just now?” Keren-Happuch writhed slightly, as she looked in a frightened way in the artist’s face.
“Do you hear me? I said, Who was the lady who came just now? It was not the Contessa?”
“No, sir.”
“Was it that – that American lady?”
“What! her with the pretty face, who went away crying, sir? Oh no; it wasn’t her.”
The girl’s words sent a sting through him.
“Then who was it?”
“Please, Mr Dale, sir, I don’t like to tell you.”
“Tell me this instant, girl,” he cried, catching her fiercely by the arm.
“Oh, don’t, please, Mr Dale,” she whimpered. “You frighten me.”
“Then speak.”
“Yes, sir; but I shall holler if you pinch my arm, and that ’Talian girl’ll hear me.”
“Who was it, then?”
“Please, sir, it was a cracker.”
“What?”
“A bit of a fib, sir. I knowed you wanted to get rid of them two ’cause you’d got her as you’re so fond on shut up in there.”
“Silence!”
“Yes, sir, but missus can’t hear; she’s down in the kitchen.”
“Then nobody came?”
“No, sir; I thought if I come and said that, you’d like it, because it would send them away. I’ve often done it for missus when some one’s been bothering her for money.”
“Go down,” said Dale, writhing beneath the sense of degradation he felt at being under this obligation to the poor little slut before him.
“Yes, Mr Dale, sir; but please don’t you be cross with me. I don’t mind missus, but it hurts me if you are.”
“Go down.”
“Yes, sir,” said the girl, with a sob; and the tears began to make faint marks on her dirty face. “I wouldn’t ha’ done it, sir, on’y I knowed you was in love with her and wanted to be alone.”
“Poor Cornel!” muttered Dale as he turned away. “Fallen so low as this! If you only knew!”
“Please, Mr Dale, sir, have I done very wrong?” she whimpered.
“No; go down now.”
“Keren – Hap – puch!”
“Comin’, mum,” cried the girl, thrusting her head out of the door, and then turning back “Oh, thankye, sir. I don’t mind now.”
Dale fastened the door after her; and as he turned back, that of the inner room opened, and Valentina came out with her eyes flashing and a joyful look upon her face, as she took his arm and nestled to him.
“We must never forget that poor, brave little drudge, dear,” she whispered fondly. “Don’t look so serious. All that is nothing to us.”
“Nothing?” he said, as he bent down, fascinated by the beautiful eyes which gazed so tenderly into his.
“Nothing. I am glad they came, to show you how little cause for compunction you have. You see what she is – what the wretched woman is who gives me her sickly kisses and calls me her friend.” She clung to him, and passed her soft white hand over his brow as she looked into his eyes, her voice growing gentle like the cooing of some dove, as she almost whispered —
“I am going now for awhile, but when I am gone don’t think of me as a mad, reckless woman, abandoned to her passion, false to her husband and her oaths. I never loved but you, Armstrong: I shall never love another. Try and think of me as one who was forced into a marriage with that despicable wretch who in one week taught me to loathe him; and till I saw you I was the wretched being whose life was void, a kind of gilded doll upon which he hung his jewels, and whom he paraded before his guests, while in private my life was a mockery. Wife? By law, yes, till we can break the tie, and then you will take me to your heart, dear, away from all that black despairing life, to a new one all delight and joy. For I shall be with you, my brave, noble – husband! May I call you husband then?”
She sank upon her knees, clasped her arms about him, and laid her cheeks against his hands, murmuring softly —
“If you will take me for your wife, dearest. If not, I should be always happy as your slave.”
He would have been more than man if he had not raised the beautiful appealing woman to his breast, and held her tightly there.
“I love you – I love you!” she murmured, as her soft, swimming eyes gazed in his, “and it is misery to leave you now. But there is all that new joy in my heart to keep me waiting and hopeful till I come again.”
“But the risk – for you?” he said.
“Risk?” she laughed softly. “You will protect me. I must go now, and you will wait till your poor Italian model is here once more – she whom you love so well.”
He clasped her to his heart, and held her till she faintly struggled to be free, and then laughingly covered her face with the thick veil her husband had thrown down.
“There,” she said merrily. “Now I must go. Back to my faithful Jaggs.”
“What!”
“He is my slave – ‘The Emperor,’ he says you call him. He has been my slave from the first day you sent him to the house. He told me everything about you in answer to my questions regarding the portrait you had painted from memory, and then – ‘Armstrong does love me with all his heart’ I said to myself, and I was ready to risk everything to win that love.”
“And did he suggest that you should be my model?” said Dale.
“No; that was my idea, when he told me how hard you were pressed. He helped me, and I came. And now, once more, I must go. It will not be like life until I am here again.”
She gave him her white hands, which he held passionately to his lips. Then, covering them hastily with her common gloves, she drew her cloak about her.
“One moment,” he whispered. “The address? Where are you now – for this?”
“Always in your heart,” she said, in a passionate whisper. Then, “A rivederla,” she said aloud, and was gone.
“Poor Cornel!” sighed Dale, as he sank into a chair. “Forgive me, dear. She is right; a boy and girl’s pure gentle love, of which I am not worthy. It is fate, dear, and this is really love – a love for which a man might sacrifice honour – even sell his very soul.”
So he said, for it has been written of old – “Love is blind.”
Chapter Twenty Two.
A Last Effort
“Corny, I’ve no patience with you,” cried Dr Thorpe, as they sat at dinner in their hotel with a guest that evening – Joe Pacey.
“Not to-night, dear,” she said, with a quiet, grave smile. – “He has very little patience with me when he comes home tired from the hospitals,” she continued, turning to Pacey. “He works too hard.”
“Yes: he does seem a glutton over work; but we must work hard nowadays to succeed.”
“Hah, you are right,” said the young doctor. “It was all very well a hundred years ago. Plenty of medical men went through life then without half the knowledge I possess, while I’m a perfect baby to your big doctors.”
“No, you are not, dear,” said Cornel quietly. “You know that you stand first among our young medical men.”
“Humph! not saying much that; but this is begging the question. I shall want to stay in England another three months, and, as I was saying, the Hudsons go back by the next boat. I’ve been to the office: you can have a cabin, so you had better accompany them.”
“No, dear, I shall stay and go back with you.”
Thorpe pushed his chair away from the table impatiently.
“My dear sister, where is your pride?”
“My dear brother, where is your sympathy?”
“How can I have sympathy for a girl who is so blind to her own dignity! Now, my dear Pacey, do you not agree with me that my sister is behaving very foolishly?”
“No,” said Pacey, holding his glass of wine to the light, shutting one eye and scowling at it with the other – “no, sir, I don’t.”
“Thank you, Mr Pacey,” said Cornel, laying her hand upon the table, so that he could take it in his and press it warmly.
“Can’t kiss it before company,” he said, in his abrupt way. “Please take it as being done – or owing.”
“You are as bad over the scamp as she is,” cried Thorpe sharply.
“Come, come, doctor,” cried Pacey; “you are too hard. If Armstrong were suffering from a bodily disease, you would stand by him.”
“Of course. But this – ”
“Is a mental disease,” cried Pacey, “so why blame your sister for standing by the patient?”
“Bah! Don’t talk like that. I haven’t patience with her. I thought her firm, self-reliant, and proud of her position as a woman.”
“Quite right,” said Pacey, turning and smiling at Cornel. “She’s all that.”
“I join issue,” cried Thorpe. “No: she is neither one nor the other.”
“And I say that she is all three,” cried Pacey, bringing his fist down on the table with a thump, which drew the waiters’ attention. “I beg pardon,” he said hastily. “No, I don’t. I’m not ashamed of my earnestness.”
“Just eight,” said Thorpe, looking at his watch. “I’ve a meeting to attend. You will stop and talk to my sister?”
“Of course.”
Ten minutes later they were alone, and Cornel’s manner changed.
“You will not mind my brother’s manner to you?” she said earnestly.
“Not I,” replied Pacey bluffly. “He’s mad against Dale, naturally. Wouldn’t be a good brother if he were not. I’m mad against him, and get worse; every day.”
“But tell me now – what news have you for me?” Pacey looked at her with pitying thoughtfulness, and then said gravely —
“You have trusted me thoroughly since the first day we met, and made me your friend.”
“Completely,” she said earnestly.
“And a friend would be nothing unless sincere.”
“No.”
“I have no news, then, that is good.”
Cornel sighed, and rested her head upon her hand.
“Can nothing be done?” she said at last. “Oh! it is too dreadful to let his whole career be blasted like this! Mr Pacey, you are his friend; pray, pray, help me! Tell me what to do.”
Pacey’s brow wrinkled so that he looked ten years older, and he sat for some time with his eyes averted.
At last he spoke.
“I know what I ought to say to you as your friend.”
“Yes; what?” she cried eagerly; but Pacey shook his head.
“Nothing but – be strong and bear your cruel disappointment like a true woman, proud of her dignity.”
“I could bear all that,” she said piteously, “even if it broke my heart, but I cannot bear the knowledge that the boy with whom I walked hand in hand as a child, grew up with as if he were my own brother, and whose child-love ripened into a sincere affection, should drift away like this. Mr Pacey – this woman! I know how beautiful she is, and how she has ensnared him. I ceased to wonder when we stood face to face. I know too what influence she has, but nothing but horror and misery can result from it all, and it cuts me to the heart to think of what he will suffer – of the bitter repentance to come.”
Pacey sighed.
“To me, night and day, it is as if he were drowning – being swept away; and if – utterly worn out – I sleep for a few minutes, I wake up with a start, for his hands seem to be stretched out to me to save him before it is too late.”
Pacey was silent still as he sat with his arms resting upon his knees, and his head bent, gazing at the carpet.
At last he looked up, to meet her appealing eyes fixed on his.
“Yes,” he said, and he took a long deep breath: “there is no other way.”
“You – you have thought of something?” she cried eagerly.
“It is a forlorn hope,” he replied. “I ought not to advise it, and your brother will blame me, and tell me I am not acting as an honest friend.”
“The danger sweeps away all ideas of worldly custom, Mr Pacey,” she cried with animation, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks flushed; and as he gazed at her, the artist mentally said that if his friend could see the woman he had so cruelly jilted, now, he would humbly ask her to pardon him, and take him back to her heart.
“Yes,” he said firmly, “this is not time to study etiquette. Go to him, then. Don’t look upon it as sinking your womanly dignity, but as a last effort to save the man you once loved from a deadly peril.”
“Yes; and when I go,” said Cornel faintly, “what can I say more than I have said?”
“Say nothing, child. If your face, and your reproachful forgiving eyes do not bring him to your feet, come away, and go down upon your knees to thank God for saving you from a man not worthy of a second thought.”
Chapter Twenty Three.
Too Late
“And my poor painting,” said Armstrong, smiling, as Valentina, cloaked and ready to go once more, still clung to him – “not a step farther;” and he unlocked the door.
“No,” she whispered softly, “not a step farther,” and she looked up through her thick veil in his saddened face. “Let fate be kind to us and the work go on for years and years.”
“Until I am old and grey.”
“And I a bent, withered creature,” she whispered. “No; you will never be old and grey in my eyes, but always the same as now. Can you say that to me?”
She laid her hands upon his shoulders, and forced him back, so that she could gaze searchingly in his eyes.
“Yes!” he cried passionately. “You know only too well.”
“Yes, I know it well,” she murmured. “And it shall go on and on. What is the praise of a fickle public worth? It is your masterpiece, but what of that? It might bring you fame and fortune, but it has already brought us love that can know no change.”
“That can know no change, dearest. Now you must go, or you will be breaking faith with me again to-morrow, and you have made me so that I cannot live without you now.”
“Yes, once more,” she sighed, “I must go – back to my gilded prison.”
She clung to him fondly again, and her voice was very soft and tender, as she rested her brow upon his breast.
“When will you say to me – ‘Stay; go back no more?’ Armstrong, this life is killing me. End all the miserable trickery and subterfuge. That woman is planning and plotting to take my place. Once it roused up all my pride and hatred; now all that is past. Let him sue for his divorce if Lady Grayson wishes, and then I shall have my revenge: for he will laugh in her false, deceitful face. Marry her? – Not he. – What is it, dearest?”
He had started back, and as she raised her eyes, she saw that he was looking angrily at something behind her.
She turned slowly, calling upon herself for readiness to meet the face of her husband, as she believed, but it was Cornel standing just within the doorway, flushed, proud, and stern, and she uttered a sigh of relief.
“A domani, signore,” she said quietly to Armstrong, and then turned and took a step toward the door, but Cornel raised her hand, and the proud, haughty-looking figure shrank back a step or two in surprise.
“Stop!” said Cornel firmly; and she closed the door behind. “I wish to speak to you both.”
“Cornel!” cried Armstrong, in a low and excited voice, “this is madness. For Heaven’s sake, go. Have you no delicacy – no shame?”
“You ask me that!” she cried scornfully; and he shrank from her indignant eyes. “Man, where is your own delicacy? – woman, where is your shame? I claim the right – in the name of truth and honour – to come and upbraid you both.”
Valentina made a gesture with her hands, and turned to Armstrong to say in French —
“What does the strange lady mean?”
Cornel took a step forward, with her eyes flashing.
“Mean, Lady Dellatoria!” she cried loudly; and her rival started and drew herself up.
“Cornel! Silence, for Heaven’s sake.”
“You invoke Heaven?” she cried; and she turned from him with a look of disgust and scorn. “It means,” she cried, “that this is no scene in amateur theatricals played by your set, but real life. You are face to face with me – the woman whose love you have outraged, whose life you have wrecked as well as his. And for what? Your pastime for a few weeks.”
“No!” said Valentina, throwing back her head and seizing Armstrong’s hand, to hold it tightly between her own. “He is mine – my love for ever. I told you, when you came and defied me, that I could laugh at your girlish efforts to separate us – for it was fate. There, you have tracked me down and seen; now go.”
“Yes, I have tracked you down and seen, and you throw off your contemptible disguise – this paltry cloaking and veiling. Armstrong, is this the type of the boasted British woman – an example to the world?”
“Cornel, silence! Pray go!”
“Not yet. I have a right here in the home of my affianced husband. I find him being dragged to ruin and despair by a heartless creature, devoid of love as she is of shame.”
“You lie!” cried Valentina fiercely, as she made a quick movement toward Cornel, but Armstrong held her back. “Yes,” she said, calming as quickly as she had flashed into rage; “poor child, she is half mad with misery and disappointment. I will not speak – but pity.”
Cornel held out her hands to Armstrong as Lady Dellatoria half turned away and linked her fingers upon his arm.
“Before it is too late, Armstrong,” said Cornel softly. “No word of reproach shall ever come from those who love you.”
He shook his head.
“Listen, dear,” she whispered, but her voice thrilled both. “I come to you a weak woman, but strong in my armour of love and truth. They tell me it is lowering, weak, and contemptible – that I am utterly lost to a woman’s sense of dignity and shame. But they do not know my love for you – yes, my love for you, I say it even before this creature, who cannot know the depth and truth of a true woman’s love – I come, I say, once again to plead, to beg of you to come. Let her go back to her own people; come you to yours, before it is too late.”
“It is too late, girl,” said Valentina gently. “I forgive you all you have said in ignorance that my love is stronger, more womanly, than yours. In Heaven’s sight this is my husband now. We sorrow for you, and can pity. But go now, and leave us in peace. I tell you again – it is too late.”
“Yes,” said Cornel, with a piteous sigh. “God forgive you, Armstrong! I am beaten.” Then, as if inspired, her eyes flashed, and the colour left her cheeks, and she cried wildly, “Yes, it is too late.” There were voices on the stairs coming plainly to them, for Cornel had in ignorance left the door unlatched, so that the sounds were uninterrupted.
“He’s got a lady with him.”
“I know, girl. Stand aside. Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, sir; Count Delly-tory, sir.”
“Yes!” cried Cornel, with a wail of horror; “her husband. Then it is indeed too late.”
“No!” cried Valentina fiercely; “your opportunity for revenge.”
She drew back, and stood there erect and proud, with defiance flashing through her thick veil as the Conte entered, quickly followed by Lady Grayson. A heavy, gold-topped, ebony stick was in his hand, his lips were compressed, and it was plain to see in his pallid face and dilated nostrils that he was struggling with suppressed passion.
He was making straight for Armstrong when his eyes fell upon Cornel, who stood now white and calm, as if ready to interpose. Then he looked sharply at the cloaked and veiled figure just on the artist’s right.
He stopped in astonishment, confused, and as if the supply of vital force which had urged him on had suddenly been checked.
It was Armstrong’s opportunity. A few carelessly spoken, contemptuous utterances as to the meaning of this intrusion and the like would have sufficed to send the Conte back, mortified, and in utter ignorance, to vent his rage upon Lady Grayson, who, in her malignant desire to cast down her dearest confidante and friend from her throne, had brought him on there to be a witness of one of his wife’s secret meetings with her lover, such as she had vowed to him were taking place. But Armstrong, in utter scorn of all subterfuge, stood there manly and ready to meet the man in full defiance, come what might.
A terrible silence followed, of moments that felt to all like hours, while each waited for others to speak.
It was Cornel’s opportunity too, to bring her rival to her knees and sweep her for ever from her path, and Valentina felt it as she stood there with her teeth clenched and face convulsed behind the thick veil. For, after all, in spite of her bravery and readiness to defy the man whose name she bore, she was a woman still, and instinctively shrank from the dénouement, knowing as she did that a terrible scene must follow; and another later, in spite of English laws, for it was an Italian pitted against a man who would dare all.
But Cornel remained silent, and Lady Grayson scanned all in turn, ending by fixing her eyes upon the great canvas whose back was toward them where they stood.
“I – I beg pardon – some mistake,” stammered the Conte. “I did not know that – Curse you,” he whispered to Lady Grayson, and relapsing in his excitement into broken English, “You make me with you silly cock-bull tale a fool.”
Armstrong still made no movement, said no word, but Lady Grayson read him as if he were an open page laid before her, and her eyes twinkled and flashed.
The keen-witted American girl saw it too, and with all her gentleness and love, she possessed the quick perception and readiness of a people born in a clearer air and warmer clime. In those moments, with all her hatred and scorn for the woman who was the blight upon her life, she shrank in all the tenderness of her nature from seeing her humbled to the very dust. More; she grasped the horror of the situation; how that, beneath the weak flippancy of the man of fashion, there smouldered the hot passions of his countrymen – passions which, once roused, are as hot and destructive as the lava of their great volcano. She saw in imagination, blows, and Armstrong injuring or injured, either being too horrible to be borne. Lastly, she grasped Lady Grayson’s plan.
“It is for his sake,” she said to herself, “not for hers;” and as, apparently prompted by a whisper from Lady Grayson, the blood flushed into the Conte’s face again and he fixed his eyes on his wife, Cornel stepped forward and held out her hand.
“Good-bye, Mr Dale,” she said gently; “you have business with this lady and gentleman; we shall see you another time. Come, signora.”
She turned and held out her hand to Valentina, proving herself a better actress, for there was a smile upon her lip, and she bent forward as if whispering something through the veil, the only utterances being the words —
“Don’t hesitate. Quick!”
Valentina stared at her – half stunned. Then, as if moved by a stronger will than her own, she laid one white hand on Cornel’s arm, and, just bending her head to Armstrong, they moved slowly toward the door.
It was the left hand, and ungloved.
Cornel saw it, and could not restrain a start.
The hand was ungloved, and upon it sparkled several rings – for there had been no need of late to keep up the disguise so closely – and one of those rings was of plain gold.
They were nearly at the door, the Conte drawing back on one side to let them pass, Lady Grayson on the other, Armstrong still motionless, and feeling as if a hand were compressing his throat, while Cornel, as she went on with the set smile upon her lip, felt that the hand upon her arm trembled, and fancied she heard a sob.
“It is for his sake,” she said to herself, “for his sake;” and the next minute they would have been outside the door, when, with one quick movement, Lady Grayson reached out her hand, and snatched the veil from Valentina’s face.
The Conte uttered a cry of rage, and made a dash at her, but she avoided him, and sprang toward Armstrong, who caught her to his breast, but so as to have his right hand at liberty.
But it was not free in time, for the Conte, with a cry of rage, swung round, and brought down the heavy ebony stick with a sickening crash upon the artist’s head, then caught Valentina from him as he fell inert and senseless upon the floor.
“Well, am I such a simple idiot and fool?” said Lady Grayson in a quick whisper.
“Yes; to talk now,” was the fierce reply. “Help me; get her away, or I shall kill him.”
Without another word she went to Valentina’s side, and between them they dragged her, sick at heart, trembling, and half fainting, out of the studio and down the stairs to Lady Grayson’s carriage, which was waiting at the door.
“Is anything the matter, miss? Can I do anything?” said a voice.
Cornel looked up from where she was kneeling on one of the rugs with Armstrong’s head in her lap, and saw that the grimy little face of Keren-Happuch was peering in at the door.
Cornel looked at her wildly for a few moments, and then, in a low hoarse voice, whispered —
“Yes: quick, water!” Then, with a piteous sigh, “Oh, the blood – the blood! Help! – quick, quick! He is dying. Oh, my love, my love, that it should come to this!”
