Beatrice had left the room a few minutes before, and she was now returning to it through the ante-chamber. The dusk was rapidly falling, and, not knowing of any presence but her own, she was extremely startled to find herself grasped by the shoulder, by a firm hand which evidently had no intention of standing any trifling. She looked up into the face of a stranger, and yet a face which was not altogether strange. It was that of a tall, handsome man, with fair hair, and a stern, pained compression of brow and lips.
“Is it true?” he said in a husky voice.
“Is what true?” Beatrice was too startled to think what he meant.
The grasp upon her shoulder tightened till a weaker woman would have screamed.
“Belasez, do not trifle with me! Is she dying?”
And then, all at once, Beatrice knew who it was that asked her.
“It is too true, Sir Richard,” she said sadly, pityingly, with almost a reverential compassion for that faithful love which had brought him there that night.
“I must see her, Belasez.”
“Is it wise, Sir Richard?”
“Wise!”