“I hope,” Montanelli interrupted, “that you will at least not replace the fetters while he is ill. A man in the condition you describe can hardly make any more attempts to escape.”
“I shall take good care he doesn't,” the Governor muttered to himself as he went out. “His Eminence can go hang with his sentimental scruples for all I care. Rivarez is chained pretty tight now, and is going to stop so, ill or not.”
“But how can it have happened? To faint away at the last moment, when everything was ready; when he was at the very gate! It's like some hideous joke.”
“I tell you,” Martini answered, “the only thing I can think of is that one of these attacks must have come on, and that he must have struggled against it as long as his strength lasted and have fainted from sheer exhaustion when he got down into the courtyard.”
Marcone knocked the ashes savagely from his pipe.
“Well, anyhow, that's the end of it; we can't do anything for him now, poor fellow.”
“Poor fellow!” Martini echoed, under his breath. He was beginning to realise that to him, too, the world would look empty and dismal without the Gadfly.
“What does she think?” the smuggler asked, glancing towards the other end of the room, where Gemma sat alone, her hands lying idly in her lap, her eyes looking straight before her into blank nothingness.
“I have not asked her; she has not spoken since I brought her the news. We had best not disturb her just yet.”