She hurried on. Alice asked Kimberly to take her back to the ballroom. He urged her to go upstairs and lie down for a moment.
The music for the dance was still coming from within and against Kimberly's protest Alice insisted on going back. He gave way and led her out upon the floor. For a few measures, with a determined effort, she followed him. Then she glided mechanically on, supported only by Kimberly and leaning with increasing weakness upon his arm.
When he spoke to her, her answers were vague, her words almost incoherent. "Take me away, Robert," she whispered, "I am faint."
He led her quietly from the floor and assisted her up a flight of stairs to his mother's apartment. There he helped her to lie down on a couch. Annie was hurriedly summoned. A second maid was sent in haste for Doctor Hamilton and Dolly.
Alice could no longer answer Kimberly's questions as he knelt. She lay still with her eyes closed. Her respiration was hardly perceptible and her hands had grown cold. It was only when Kimberly anxiously kissed her that a faint smile overspread her tired face. In another moment she was unconscious.
CHAPTER XL
When Hamilton hastily entered the room, Annie, frightened and helpless, knelt beside her mistress, chafing her hands. On the opposite side of the couch Kimberly, greatly disturbed, looked up with relief.
Taking a chair at her side, the doctor lifted Alice's arm, took her pulse and sat for some time in silence watching her faint and irregular respiration.
He turned after a moment to Kimberly to learn the slight details of the attack, and listening, retracted the lids of Alice's eyes and examined the pupils. Reflecting again in silence, he turned her head gently from side to side and afterward lifted her arms one after the other to let them fall back beside her on the couch.
Even these slight efforts to obtain some knowledge of Alice's condition seemed to Kimberly disquieting and filled him with apprehension. The doctor turned to Annie. "Has your mistress ever had an experience like this before, Annie?"