“How hot it is—” she complained, in a dry, whispering voice. “Fires, fires everywhere!—Give me to drink!”
The man hesitated a moment, upon the blind impulse of flight. But the long habit of fidelity was stronger even than fear of the pestilence. He took up a flask from a table,—the en cas after the foreign manner, awaiting the master’s return,—poured out a glass of wine and tendered it to her.
“Hot? Eh—but your hand is cold, my lady!”
She drank; seemed to gain a little strength.
“Cold?” she took up the word with an inconsequent laugh. “So would you be, mon ami, had you been roaming the streets, for months … years … as I have been, to-night! You are a kind old man. The others ran from me … one robbed me and beat me, then he, too, ran away.…”
And then Chitterley marked how cruelly, in sooth, the woman had been dealt with; her gown and bodice rent where seemingly the jewels had been snatched; and there was blood on her neck, trickling from the torn lobe of her little ear.
“Mon beau Rockhurst!” she went on, in that loud whisper, as of one light-headed. “I drink to you, to you.” She lifted the cup again, but stopped, catching at her throat: “It is fire—why did you give me fire to drink?”
He seized the glass from her failing hand.
“God ’a’ mercy! you are raving, madam!—you must.…”
She turned her red glance to him, then beat the air with a fierce gesture, imposing silence, and seemed to strain her ear to sounds inaudible:—