"Ilga," I cried, stretching out my hands to her. She made no movement. I felt my legs bend beneath me, as if the bones of them were dissolved to water, and I sank heavily upon my knees. "Ilga," I cried again, but very faintly. She stirred not so much as a muscle to help me, and I fell forward swooning, with my head upon her feet.
CHAPTER XVI.
[CONCERNING AN INVITATION AND A LOCKED DOOR.]
When consciousness returned to me, and I became sensible of where I lay, I perceived that Elmscott was in the room. He stood in the centre, slapping his boot continually with his riding-crop, and betraying every expression of impatience upon his face. But I gave little heed to him, for beside me knelt Ilga, a bottle of hartshorn salts in her hand. I was resting upon a couch, which stood before the spinet; the lamps were lighted, and the curtains drawn across the window, so that my swoon must have lasted some while.
As I let my eyes rest upon the Countess, she slipped an arm under my head and raised it, taking at the same time a cup of cordial, which Clemence Durette held ready. 'Twas of a very potent description, and filled me with a great sense of comfort. Ilga moved her arm as though to withdraw it. "No," I murmured to her, and she smiled and let it remain.
"Come, Morrice," said Elmscott. "You have but to walk downstairs. A carriage is waiting."
He moved towards the couch. I tried to raise my arm to warn him off, but found that it had been bandaged afresh, and was fastened in a sling. For a moment I could not remember how I had come by the hurt; then the history of it came back to me, and with that the promise I had made to my dying antagonist. For while I believed that Lady Tracy could have no grounds for her apprehensions, seeing that the Countess must needs be ignorant of her relations with the Count, whatever they might have been, I felt that the circumstances under which the request was uttered gave to it a special authority, and laid upon me a strict compulsion to obey it to the letter. The request, moreover, fitted exactly with my own intention. Ilga believed now that I had never seen Lady Tracy until that morning when she fainted, and so by merely confessing that the death of Count Lukstein lay at my door, and at my door alone, I should divert all possibilities of suspicion from approaching Lady Tracy; so I whispered to Ilga:
"Send every one away!"
"Nay," she replied; "your cousin has told me."
"It is not that," said I. "There is something else--something my cousin could not know."