"I am very dizzy," he said. "Try and help me to a chair, Inez."
She rose swiftly, holding his hand, and then putting one arm round him under his own. He struggled to his feet and leaned his weight upon her, and breathed hard. The effort hurt him where the flesh was torn.
"I am wounded, too," he said quietly, as he glanced at the blood on his vest. "But it is nothing serious, I think."
With the instinct of the soldier hurt in the chest, he brushed his lips with the small lace ruffle of his sleeve, and looked at it, expecting to see the bright red stains that might mean death. There was nothing.
"It is only a scratch," he said, with an accent of indifference. "Help me to the chair, my dear."
"Where?" she asked. "I do not know the room."
"One forgets that you are blind," he answered, with a smile, and leaning heavily upon her, he led her by his weight, till he could touch the chair in which he had sat reading Dolores' letter when the King had entered an hour earlier.
He sat down with a sigh of relief, and stretched first one leg and then the other, and leaned back with half-closed eyes.
"Where is Dolores?" he asked at last. "Why did she go away?"
"The jester took her away, I think," answered Inez. "I found them together on the terrace. She was trying to come back to you, but he prevented her. They thought you were dead."