She was at the door in an instant rapping at a pane, "Herbert! Herbert! are you there? Herbert! Herbert!" He might have done this thing. He might have come over from Meerut, for he had loved the dead woman, he had loved her dearly.
But there was no answer. Then wrapping the blanket round her hand she dashed it through the pane, and removing the glass, managed to crane out a little. She could see better so. Was that someone, or only a heap of clothes in the shadow of the corner by the inner wall? By this time the moonlight was shining white on the orange-trees on the further side of the road. She could see beyond them to the garden, but nothing of the road itself, nothing of the steep flight of steps leading down to it; a balustrade set with pots filling up all but the center arch prevented that.
"Herbert!" she cried again louder, "is that you?" But there was not a sound.
God in heaven! who lay there? dying or dead? helplessness broke down her self-control at last, and she crept back into the room, back to the old companionship, crying miserably. Ah! she was so tired, so weary of it all. So glad to rest! A sense of real physical relief came to her body as, for the first time for long, long hours, she let her muscles slacken, and to her mind as she let herself cry on, like a child, forgetting the cause of grief in the grief itself. Forgetting even that after a time in sheer rest; so that the moon, when it had climbed high enough to peep in through the closed doors, found her asleep, her arms spread out over the crimson network, her head resting on what lay beneath it. But she slept dreamfully and once her voice rose in the quick anxious tones of those who talk in their sleep.
"Freddy! Freddy!" she called. "Save Freddy, someone! Never mind, ayah! He is only a boy, and the other, the other may----" Then her words merged into each other uncertainly, after the manner of dreamers, and she slept sounder.
Soundest of all, however, in the cool before the dawn; so that she did not wake with a stealthy foot in the side veranda, a stealthy hand on the hasp outside; did not wake even when Jim Douglas stood beside her, looking down vexedly on the blanket-shrouded figure pillowed on the body he came to seek. For he had been delayed by a thousand difficulties, and though the shallow grave was ready dug in the garden, the presence of this native--even though a woman, apparently--must make his task longer. Was it a woman? One hand on his revolver, he laid the other on the sleeper's shoulder. His touch brought Kate to her feet blindly, without a cry, to meet Fate.
"My God! Mrs. Erlton!" he cried, and she recognized his voice at once. Fate indeed! His chance and hers. His chance and hers!
She stood half stupefied by her dreams, her waking; but he, after his nature, was ready in a second for action, and broke in on his own wondering questions impatiently. "But we are losing time. Quick! you must get to some safer place before dawn. Twist that blanket right--let me, please. That will do. Now, if you will follow close, I must get you hidden somewhere for to-day. It is too near dawn for anything else. Come!"
She put out her hand vaguely, as if to stave his swift decision away, and, looking in her face, he recognized that she must have time, that he must curb his own energy.
"Then it was you who fired," she said in a dull voice. "You who shut me in here? You who killed those voices. Why didn't you answer when I called, when I thought it was Herbert? It was very unkind--very unkind."