“One moment, lad. Ah, yes,” said the Colonel. “Gloriana has heard the serenade, and is about to respond to her lover’s musically amatory call. Look, Dick, look.”
Richard Linnell’s heart sank, for a white arm drew back the curtain, and then the catch of the window fastening was pressed back, and a chord in the young man’s breast seemed to snap; but it was only the spring of the window hasp.
Click!
Volume One—Chapter Seven.
After the Storm.
The “ghastly serenade” it was called at Saltinville as the facts became known.
That night Richard Linnell was standing with his teeth set, his throat dry, and a feeling of despair making his heart seem to sink, watching the white hand that was waved as soon as the sash was opened. Half blind with the blood that seemed to rush to his eyes, he glared at the window. Then a sudden revulsion of feeling came over him as a familiar voice that was not Claire’s cried, “Help!—a doctor!” and then the speaker seemed to stagger away.
The rest was to Richard Linnell like some dream of horror, regarding which he recalled the next morning that he had thundered at the door, that he had helped to carry Claire to her room, and that he had afterwards been one of the group who stood waiting in the dining-room until the doctor came down to announce that Miss Denville was better—that Lady Teigne was quite dead.