“In any case, I shall be in the next room, within call. As soon as you get rid of him you had better go and lie down a bit. You have been standing too long to-day.”
“Oh, no! I would rather go on working.”
She went slowly down the stairs, Martini following in silence. She had grown to look ten years older in these few days, and the gray streak across her hair had widened into a broad band. She mostly kept her eyes lowered now; but when, by chance, she raised them, he shivered at the horror in their shadows.
In the little parlour she found a clumsy-looking man standing with his heels together in the middle of the floor. His whole figure and the half-frightened way he looked up when she came in, suggested to her that he must be one of the Swiss guards. He wore a countryman's blouse, which evidently did not belong to him, and kept glancing round as though afraid of detection.
“Can you speak German?” he asked in the heavy Zurich patois.
“A little. I hear you want to see me.”
“You are Signora Bolla? I've brought you a letter.”
“A—letter?” She was beginning to tremble, and rested one hand on the table to steady herself.
“I'm one of the guard over there.” He pointed out of the window to the fortress on the hill. “It's from—the man that was shot last week. He wrote it the night before. I promised him I'd give it into your own hand myself.”
She bent her head down. So he had written after all.