Count Gamba looked at her questioningly. He faced Count Guiccioli as Teresa went on:
“This is what I demand. If he lives he shall stay here till he is well. Not as a guest; he would accept no hospitality from this house. He shall hold this wing of the casa under rental.”
There was a moment’s pause.
“So be it.” The assent was grudging and wrathful.
“One thing more. So long as he is in the casa you will cause him no physical harm—neither you nor your servants.”
While he hesitated a sound came from the bed. Gordon’s eyes were open; they held faint but conscious knowledge.
From the abyss of nothingness those voices had called to him, like conversation in a dream. Sight had opened more fully and he had stared at the gilded rafters, puzzled. This was not the Hotel Pellegrino in Bologna. He stirred and felt a twinge of pain. With the voices grown articulate, it came flashing back—that one kiss; the flying dart of agony; the dizzy descent; Tita and—Teresa. He suddenly saw a face: the old man at San Lazzarro, Teresa’s husband! He shut his eyes to drive away the visions, and her clear tones called them wide again.
He heard fully and understandingly then; knew that Trevanion and Count Guiccioli had made common cause; realized the courage with which Teresa had brought him to her husband’s casa—all with a bitter-sweet pain of helplessness and protest against the logic of circumstances that had thrust him into the very position that by all arguments looking to her ultimate happiness he must have avoided. He heard her voice demand that grudging promise of his safety. It was then he had moaned—less with physical than mental pain.
Teresa leaned to the bed, where Gordon had lifted himself on his elbow. The effort dislodged the bandage and its edges reddened swiftly. He strove to speak, but the effort sickened him and he fell back on the pillows.
Teresa turned again upon Count Guiccioli. “Swear it, or all I know Ravenna shall know to-morrow!” She held the kriss toward him, hilt up, like a Calvary, and half involuntarily his bent fingers touched his breast.