“I—I cannot kill you, I cannot kill the woman who stood where you are standing a moment ago. Matilde was there! She was alive; do you hear me? Alive and—ah!”
The exclamation fell from his lips as she suddenly leaned forward, her intense gaze fixed on Frederic's face.
“See! Ah, see! I prayed, and I have been answered. See!”
He turned. Frederic's eyes were open. He was looking up at them with a piteous appeal, an appeal for help, for life, for consciousness.
“He is not dead! Frederic, Frederic, my son——” Brood dropped to his knees and frantically clutched at the hand that lay stretched beside the limp figure. The pain-stricken eyes closed slowly.
Yvonne knelt beside Brood. He saw a slim, white hand go out and touch the pallid brow.
“I shall save your soul, James Brood,” a voice was saying, but it seemed far away. “He shall not die. Your poor, wretched soul may rest secure. I shall keep death away from him. You shall not have to pay for this; no, not for this. The bullet was meant for me. I owe my life to him, you shall owe his to me. But you have yet to pay a greater debt than this can ever become. He is your son. You owe another for his life, and you will never be out of her debt, not even in hell, James Brood!”
Slowly Frederic's eyes opened again. They wavered from one face to the other and there was in them the unsolvable mystery of divination. As the lids drooped once more, Brood's manner underwent a tremendous change. The stupefaction of horror and doubt fell away in a flash and he was again the clear-headed, indomitable man of action. The blood rushed back into his veins, his eyes flashed with the returning fire of hope, his voice was steady, sharp, commanding.
“The doctor!” he cried in Yvonne's ear, as his strong fingers went out to tear open the shirt-bosom. “Be quick! Send for Hodder; we must save him.” She did not move. He whirled upon her fiercely. “Do as I tell you! Are you so——”
“Dr Hodder is on the way now,” she said dully.