At last Godfrey stood erect and turned to her, and his face was very tender.
"It's no use," he said gently. "Perhaps we'd better summon a physician; but he can do nothing."
For a moment she did not seem to understand; then she suddenly threw her black hair out of her eyes and fell on her knees beside the bed. She caught one dead hand to her and fondled it and kissed it; while a great wave of sobbing swept over her.
"I should have known!" she repeated. "I should have known! It was my fault!"
I shuddered. Was it her fault? Had she been false to Marcia Lawrence, and her sister true, and was this the result of that treachery?
At last she controlled herself and stood erect, still quivering, but fairly calm. And some of her old proud, disdainful spirit returned to her.
"This gentleman I know," she said, with a little gesture in my direction, after looking at us a moment. "You," she added to Godfrey, "I do not know."
"My name is Godfrey," he answered. "I'm a friend of Mr. Lester's."
"And what are you doing here?"
Not until then did I think of our strange appearance, shoeless, covered from head to foot with yellow clay, spotted here and there with the blood which had dripped from my wound—astonishing objects, truly, to burst in upon a woman in the middle of the night! Even Godfrey, ready in invention as was ever the wily Ulysses, found himself unable, for the moment, to explain.