“Hold her—she’s hurt!” he cried hoarsely.
As the doctor and Teresa raised her, he sprung to his feet and dashed into the gaping darkness.
Teresa never could remember how the next few minutes passed. The shot must have startled others, for Nina, the padrone, Colonel Maxwell, all came running. Mrs Brodrick, too, was there.
“Take her through the window to her room,” she said quietly.
“Come on then,” said Colonel Maxwell, trying to speak cheerfully; “somebody open the window on the other side, and we shall soon see what’s wrong. Tell them, for Heaven’s sake, not to make such a confounded row,” he added to the Hungarian, who knew a little English.
Teresa was voiceless, though all that was to be done she did with absolute precision. She helped to raise her, helped to lay her on the bed, sent the others away, and stayed alone with the doctor and her dead.
For Sylvia was dead.
The shot, which might have missed Wilbraham, had struck her full in the heart. Probably, in her black dress, undistinguishable in the darkness, she had been altogether unseen. There had not been time for a cry, a quiver. The life had gone out of her before she dropped.
The little Hungarian doctor, his rosy face strangely moved, raised himself, and looked pitifully at Teresa, who held the candle. She stopped his faltering words, putting up her hand.
“I know,” she said. “I knew it from the first.”