Selaka bowed, and Miltiades glared interrogation.
“Dangerously ill?”
“It appears so.”
“Oh, good God! what a wretch I have been! Please tell him, if she gets better, and will consent to forgive me, I will gladly fulfil my engagement. Tell him it was not because Andromache ceased to be dear to me that I left her, but that, loving somebody else, I felt I had ceased to be worthy of her. Tell him it was not, heaven knows, for my pleasure I so acted, that it was a horrible grief to me.”
Miltiades glanced suspiciously from one to the other, and looked annihilation and contempt upon the sick youth.
“What does the fellow say?” he demanded, fiercely.
Selaka faithfully repeated Rudolph’s message. If Miltiades had been thunder before, he was lightning now added. He stalked to the bed, struck Rudolph full in the face, and without another word strode from the room.
“Good gracious!” cried the baroness, and fell limply into a chair.
“I must get well now,” muttered Rudolph, between his teeth.
Next day Agiropoulos and the popular poet called. It was known all over Athens that, as well as having been shot at by the sister, Rudolph had been struck by the brother. Agiropoulos took a fiendish delight in the situation. Personally he asked nothing better than to console the heroine as soon as she should have struggled back from the encompassing shadows of unreason. He was quite ready to place at her disposal fortune, hand, and heart, as much as he possessed of that superfluous commodity, which, it must be confessed, was little enough. He loved notoriety in any form, and was enchanted with the veil of romance that enveloped Andromache, not in the least scrupulous upon the point that the veil was smirched with powder and blood. If possible, these unusual stains but gave an added impetus to his interest.