Some minutes passed thus before the Lady Eva recovered her power of speech. Jeremy lost all sense of time and of events. He wanted first to comfort her and next to know what she had suffered. He had forgotten that he had come to take her away from impending danger.
At last her sobbing stopped and she murmured, her face still close against his breast: “Jeremy, mother is dead!”
“Dead!” They both spoke in whispers, as though the silent gardens were full of enemies seeking for them.
“Yes, dead.” She straightened herself and withdrew from his arms, as though she must be free before she could tell her story. Then she went on in a low, hurried, unemphasized voice: “Roger—you know, Roger Vaile—brought the news that ... that you had been defeated. He was with Thomas Wells and saw him give the signal to surrender, but he managed to get away, and when he realized it was all over he came straight here. He was badly wounded, I think—he stumbled and fell against me, and my dress is all covered with blood....” She stopped and caught her breath, then went on more firmly: “He was telling us and begging us to go away and hide, and we didn’t want to go. Then a crowd of people came into our room—servants, most of them, grooms and stable-men—and told us that everything was over, that there was no more government, and we had to get out at once, because the Treasury belonged to them now. And I said we’d go, but mother said out loud: ‘Then I must get my jewels first.’
“They got very excited at that, and when she went to her chest to get them, they went after her and pulled her away, not roughly really, and began rummaging in the chest themselves. Roger was standing, holding on to a chair, looking horribly white, and he told mother to come away and leave them. But she wouldn’t; she went back to the chest and ordered them out of the room. They pushed her away again more roughly and laughed at her, and she lost her temper—you know how she used to?—and hit one of them in the face. Then he—then he killed her ... with a sword....”
Her voice trailed away into silence. Jeremy took her cold hands and muttered brokenly. “Dearest—dearest——”
“When that happened,” she went on in the same even whisper, “Roger called out to me to run away. He’d got a great bandage around his wound, and he looked so ill I thought he was going to faint. But he stood in the door and drew his knife to keep them from coming after me: I was just outside in the passage. I couldn’t run away. Then one of them came at him, and Roger struck at him with the knife. The man just caught Roger’s wrist and held it for a minute—Roger was so weak—and then pushed him, and he fell down in the passage, and blood came pouring out of his side. Then I—I think he died. And I ran away. I don’t think they came after me ... I don’t think they did....”
She was silent again, and Jeremy took her into his arms in an inarticulate agony. She lay there limp and unresponsive. At last she whispered: “I ought to have stayed and looked after him ... but I think he was dead. Such a lot of blood came out of his wound ... it poured and poured over the floor ... it came almost to my feet....”
“Eva!” said Jeremy, and could say nothing more. Several minutes passed before he exclaimed: “It doesn’t matter. We must get away. You must try and forget it all, beloved. I’ll look after you now.”
“I will, oh, I will!” she cried, clinging to him. “But I can’t now—I can see it all the time. I’m trying. And, Jeremy,” she went on, holding him as he tried to draw her away, “afterwards, when I thought they’d gone, I went back ... I went back to my room——”