"But it is ridiculous, stupid! I am not a child, it's not in the least necessary. I don't have to be watched. Ah! c'est insupportable!"
Esther rose uncertainly, wondering if she ought to intervene. While she hesitated, a still wilder tirade decided her. She opened the door just in time to behold a startling spectacle. Lady Clifford was that instant seizing hold of her husband by his emaciated shoulders and shaking him furiously, crying in a strangled voice:
"Pas lui, pas lui! Vieux monstre que tu es!"
"Stop! Lady Clifford, what on earth are you doing?"
Wholly aghast, Esther forgot everything except that her patient was being bodily attacked—there was no other word for what was happening. Running forward, she grasped the wife forcibly by the arm and pulled her back from the bed, then, thoroughly frightened, bent over the old man, who had sunk back limp and panting. In her ear she heard the Frenchwoman's choked breathing, but she did not trouble to look at her.
"Are you all right, Sir Charles?" she asked as calmly as she could.
She was amazed to see a queer little flicker of humour in the sunken eyes.
"Oh, quite, quite," he gasped in a spent tone. "Don't trouble about me: but just get Lady Clifford away, will you?"
Turning, Esther beheld a look of baleful resentment in the black-fringed eyes. She remarked the stubby white hand with its carmine nails slowly rubbing a spot on the opposite arm, where she had grasped it a moment ago.
"You! You!" breathed the Frenchwoman in a suppressed voice. "What business have you to interfere in matters that do not concern you?"