After that no more breath.
Have I not put it into a useful jingle for you?” she cried, interpellating the old man.
But Master Simon, deeply absorbed in watching Belphegor, as the beast stretched and yawned and rolled restlessly in the sun, never turned his head. Colonel Harcourt laid a finger on her wrist, and drew her away from the others.
“What are you planning now?” he asked, in the same repressed undertone as before.
“Planning?” she echoed, and crossed his searching gaze with one of stormy defiance. “Oh, my dear confidant, do you not know all my inmost secrets? Dieu, how you stare! Two drops gladness, ten drops madness. Let me give you some of the stimulant—say three drops—’twould stir your sluggish wits. Do, I pray you, accompany me to the laboratory, and with these fair hands I will measure you a dose from the magic phial. Oh, how Master Simon will love me if I bring him a new patient! Believe me, it will do you a vast service, my dear sir, you have grown dull and slow of late—very slow.”
Out of her laughing face her eyes looked fiercely. He walked away from her; paused, with his back upon them all, to ponder. Then he frowned, and after that shrugged his shoulders.
“What a fool you are, Antony Harcourt,” said he to himself, “to have let yourself be mixed up with this woman’s business! I vow you’ll pack!”
Lady Lochore had returned to the bench and was again sitting beside Master Simon, and once more brooding. Tragedy was writ in large letters all over her wasted, death-stricken figure. Above all things the colonel hated tragedy. Violent emotions were so ill-bred, tiresome. What could not be accomplished with a gentlemanly ease, that, by the Lord, was not for him! A love intrigue, well and good. And if there were tears at the end of it, so long as they were not shed upon his waistcoat—and none knew better how to avoid that—here was your man. But when it came to—“By Gad!” thought Colonel Harcourt, with fresh emphasis, “the place is getting too hot for me.”
And back again he came to his resolution; this time fixed.
“I will take my leave of all this to-night. But, faith! I’ll part friends with the pretty widow.”