‘Himmel!’ the poor fellow exclaimed, with a kind of weak anger. ‘Why did you not say this before?’
He rose, staggered towards Aribert, and fell headlong on the floor. He had swooned. The two men raised him, carried him up the stone steps, and laid him with infinite care on a sofa. He lay, breathing queerly through the nostrils, his eyes closed, his fingers contracted; every now and then a convulsion ran through his frame.
‘One of us must fetch a doctor,’ said Prince Aribert.
‘I will,’ said Racksole. At that moment there was a quick, curt rap on the french window, and both Racksole and the Prince glanced round startled. A girl’s face was pressed against the large window-pane. It was Nella’s.
Racksole unfastened the catch, and she entered.
‘I have found you,’ she said lightly; ‘you might have told me. I couldn’t sleep. I inquired from the hotel-folks if you had retired, and they said no; so I slipped out. I guessed where you were.’ Racksole interrupted her with a question as to what she meant by this escapade, but she stopped him with a careless gesture. ‘What’s this?’ She pointed to the form on the sofa.
‘That is my nephew, Prince Eugen,’ said Aribert.
‘Hurt?’ she inquired coldly. ‘I hope not.’
‘He is ill,’ said Racksole, ‘his brain is turned.’
Nella began to examine the unconscious Prince with the expert movements of a girl who had passed through the best hospital course to be obtained in New York.