Well, now, at any rate, he had his revenge of her.
She bent forward, gazing vacantly at the blue flames. They would not be able to bury her beside Orme, because his grave was in consecrated ground! She would be buried in that patch beyond the churchyard wall, where they had laid the poor gamekeeper who died of a broken heart.
She remembered how Barrington had laughed at her when she told him that he was breaking her heart. To-morrow he would know that she had not spoken lightly — that, for the sake of her lover, a woman will gladly give up her own life.
What if Dick should be like her uncle, and try to find her in the darkness, as her uncle was trying to find his Beatrice!
She got up suddenly, and turned out the fire. She came to the door of the room and opened it. She stood listening. There was not a sound anywhere, except the drip of the rain. She walked a little way till she reached the end of the corridor opening on the gallery.
She could see the door of Dick’s bedroom from here. She stretched out her hands to him and whispered his name; the thought that her death would make him safe gave her new strength and new courage.
She suddenly told herself that she would go on whispering his name after she had shut the door of her room — until her lips could no longer speak any sound.
She ran back to her bedroom and closed the door. She came to the fireplace, and bent down swiftly, with outstretched hand. She turned on the gas. A faint hiss came to her ears like the hiss of a viper when it is about to strike. She rose to her feet and began to undress with feverish haste. Already the horrid smell of the escaping gas was in her nostrils.
She turned suddenly with a cry of dismay. The door of the room had been opened.
Ninon Darelli was standing on the threshold.
Chapter VI
That Which Is Silent
Sacha could not remember, afterward, exactly what happened when Ninon Darelli found her in that gas-laden atmosphere. Probably her brain had already begun to yield to the deadly vapor.
Her first clear recollection was feeling a cool hand pressed firmly on her brow. For some reason, that touch exasperated her. She shrank away from it and then, with suddenly restored energy, jumped out of bed and faced her rescuer.
“What do you mean by coming into my room like this, you — cheat?”
The dark eyes of the medium flashed for an instant and then, immediately, grew listless again. She shook her beautiful head sadly.
“I am sorry for you.”
There was just a trace of a foreign accent in the tones. Sacha saw that the girl’s expression was very gentle. The spasm of anger which had prompted her bitterness passed as quickly as it had come, and as inexplicably. She moaned:
“Now I shall have to start all over again, from the beginning. Oh, God, and I have no courage left.”
She flung herself down on the bed, and began to sob violently, so that her whole body was shaken. In their fierce reaction, her nerves wrought a terrible punishment. Ninon, a slight figure in her white, furred dressing gown, stood beside her, holding her wrist until the storm had begun to subside.
“Listen to me,” she whispered at last, “and I will tell you something. It was because I dreamed about you that I came here — just in time. It is not the will of the Great Spirit, you see, that you should pass over to-night.”
Her accents were low and melodious. She added:
“The man you love is in danger, from which only you can save him.”
She spoke these last words like an oracle speaking the message of Heaven. The effect on Sacha was instantaneous and overwhelming. She sat up with staring eyes already red with her weeping. She seized the hand of the medium.
“What do you say?”
Ninon repeated her message in the same tones.
“In my dream,” she whispered, “there came to me the poor girl, Beatrice, who was betrothed to Lord Templewood.”
She stood, a figure of mystery, gazing fixedly at Sacha, who regarded her with deepening wonder. It seemed impossible to doubt her sincerity. And yet there was the incident of the galloping horseman to sustain all manner of doubts.
“If I could only trust you,” the girl moaned piteously.
Ninon raised her shoulders in a gesture of contempt.
“I know. You are thinking of the doctor, who is stupid, like all doctors. I will tell you.” She paused and drew a deep breath. “If I had not been with you in that room,” she said at last, “you would not have been able to hear the sound of the hooves.
“After the doctor had laid his hands on me, you could not hear the sound any more. But, for all that, there was no trick. I did not make the sound which you heard; I am a medium. The truth is that you were able by my help to listen to that which is silent—”
A strange, distant look haunted the girl’s eyes as she spoke. Sacha felt a swift uneasiness, like the first stirrings of fear. Her scruples began to melt away.
“Will you tell me,” Ninon continued, “how I could have known that you meant to take your life to-night, if I was not able to speak to the spirits who know all things? It is not likely, on the face of it, that a young girl who has been called to the sickbed of her uncle will use that chance to commit suicide.”
“No — that is true—”
“And then this message about your lover. It must be a true message, since it has stirred your heart so deeply. Yet, for myself, I do not know, even, who your lover is, though I may perhaps suspect because of my knowledge of this house—”
She stopped speaking. Her expression was full of wonder now, like the wonder which rests always in the eyes of wild creatures. Sacha murmured:
“It is a true message.”
“And yet Mr. Lovelace, for that is whom I have guessed to be your lover, is not in any danger at all that I can think of.”
The tones were casual, almost indifferent. They conveyed the suggestion that Ninon was accustomed to being made the recipient of information which she could not understand. She sighed, and turned from the bed.
“I have given you the message,” she declared finally.
She moved to the door of the room, and seemed to be about to go away; but when she reached the door, Sacha’s voice recalled her.
“Oh, please,” the girl cried, “will you stay with me and help me? Mr. Lovelace is in such terrible danger.”
Chapter VII
Footsteps
Ninon came back to the bed and took Sacha’s hand in her own hands.
“I am very tired,” she explained gently. “To-night, I cannot help you, though I would like to help you. There is only one thing that I can do, and that is to give you a little medicine which, sometimes, I take myself. You will sleep, then.”
“What, a sleeping draft!” Sacha’s voice expressed bitter disappointment. She added: “I don’t think any sleeping draft is strong enough to drive away my fears.”
“Not a sleeping draft.”
Ninon bent over the girl and once again gazed fixedly into her eyes. Sacha was aware, suddenly, of a sense of relief, such as she had not known during all the dreadful hours since Barrington Bryan came to her house in Green Street — a swift, compelling sense which wooed her faculties to tranquillity. She closed her eyes.
“Very well,” she murmured; “if you think it will help me—”
Ninon rose from her seat and went silently out of the room. She returned in a few moments carrying in her hand a tiny silver box which gleamed brightly in the lamplight. Sacha was awaiting her return uneasily. At the sight of the gleaming box, she uttered an exclamation of fear.