'No, alive and well,' answered Trombin from the distance. 'But I hear something at this very moment,' he added, coming back empty-handed and trying the front window, as if he did not know that it was fastened with nails.
He laid his ear to the crack, and held out one hand to keep Ortensia silent.
'Yes,' he whispered an instant later, loud enough for her to hear. 'Yes—it is the sound of kicking and running—some one is kicking some one else down the hill—it is gone now!'
He stood upright again and looked round at Ortensia, whose face betrayed her anxiety, now that she was fully conscious.
'Who can it be?' she asked.
'Most gentle lady,' answered Trombin, 'I do not know, but I suspect, pray, hope, and inwardly believe that the patient, if I may so call him, was Don Alberto, and the kicker was very likely my friend Gambardella.'
'But you were to have brought my husband here! Your friend told me so!'
Ortensia's memory came back completely at Gambardella's name, and she slipped her feet from the sofa to the floor and sat up suddenly. Trombin was, of course, prepared for the question with a plausible story, but he could never count on his presence of mind when he was in love and alone for the first time with the object of his affections.
'Madam,' he answered, 'the truth is—or, as I may say, the facts in the case are——' he stammered and stopped, for the lovely Venetian had risen and was beside him already, her frightened eyes very near his, and her hand on his sleeve. His heart beat like a scared bird's and his head was whirling.
'Where is my husband?' cried Ortensia in wild anxiety. 'Something has happened to him, and you are afraid to tell me! For heaven's sake——'