“What is it?” Lalanté managed to get out, in a catching sort of gasp, her great eyes fixed upon their faces, her own cold and white. The two men looked at each other.
“Oh, you tell her, Le Sage, for God’s sake,” muttered Warren. “I can’t.” And turning, he went indoors.
“What is it, father?” repeated the girl, the lividness of her face truly awful as she pressed her hands convulsively on her heaving heart. “Don’t beat about the bush. Tell me.”
“For Heaven’s sake, child, keep up,” he answered jerkily. “It’s about Wyvern. Disturbances in Zululand. He’s—”
“Dead?”
Le Sage nodded. He could trust himself for no further words, in the face of that fearful stony-eyed grief. Viewing this, at the moment he would have given much to have seen Wyvern standing there alive and well. He had obtained his bitter, oft repeated, but secret wish, and now he would have given half he possessed had he not, as he read the effect of the shock in Lalanté’s face.
“Keep up, child. For God’s sake keep up. You’ll get over it,” he jerked forth, as the tall, fine figure of the girl swayed for a moment, then leaned against one of the gate posts for support. Was she going to faint? No, she was made of stronger stuff.
“Get over it?” The words seemed almost demoniacal in their mockery. “Get over it!” Why the world had come to an end for her from that moment. “Get over it?” Something of a wan smile came to her lips, at the bare irony suggested by the idea, as she stood, still grasping the gate post as in an iron grip. The face was white as marble, and the lips were set and blue. Only the great eyes moved, roaming listlessly here and there, but resting on nobody.
“And you—sent—him—to—his—death.”
Le Sage shivered beneath the words as beneath the cutting of a lash. The one awful fear then in his mind was that Lalanté might lose her reason. In a rush of penitential tenderness, surprising in a man of his hard and calculating nature, he poured forth a torrent of adjurations to her to pull herself together, and muster up all her courage and listen to what there was to tell; and at length he prevailed.