“Wait, please,” the voice answered. “I know why you have been angry with me. I know why you have kept away from me, why you have been so cruel! It was because I failed. Was it not, dear Mademoiselle Violet?”
She had not the breath or the courage to answer him. In a moment or two he continued, and there was a note of suppressed exultation in his tone.
“Listen! This time—I have not failed!”
She nearly screamed. The receiver in her hand burned like a live thing. Her eyes were set in a fixed and awful stare as though she were trying to see for herself outside the walls of the little room where she stood into the larger chamber from which the voice—that awful voice—came! Her own words were hysterical and uncertain, but she managed to falter them out at last.
“What do you mean? Where is Mr. Wingrave? Tell me at once!”
The voice, without being raised, seemed to take to itself a note of triumph.
“He is dying—on the floor—just here! Listen hard! Perhaps you can hear him groan! Now will you believe that I am not a coward?”
Her shriek drowned his words. She flung the receiver from her with a crash and rushed from the room into the hall. She brushed past her maid with a wild gesture.
“Never mind my wraps. Open the door, Parkins! Is the carriage waiting?”
“Yes, Milady! Shall—”