Her lips moved, but no sound came from them, so she nodded a second time. A tiny carriage-clock on the mantel-piece struck seven, and she looked up in a startled way, as if the sound had frightened her. The castle was quite still. Silence seemed to brood over the old walls.
“That fell through,” he went on, “as I told you. It was betrayed. Stipan Lanovitch was banished. He has escaped, however; Steinmetz has seen him. He succeeded in destroying some of the papers before the place was searched after the robbery—one paper in particular. If he had not destroyed that, I should have been banished. I was one of the leaders of the Charity League. Steinmetz and I got the thing up. It would have been for the happiness of millions of peasants if it had not been betrayed. In time—we shall find out who did it.”
He paused. He did not say what he would do when he had found out.
Etta was staring into the fire. Her lips were dry. She hardly seemed to be breathing.
“It is possible,” he went on in his strong, quiet, inexorable voice, “that Stipan Lanovitch knows now.”
Etta did not move. She was staring into the fire—staring—staring.
Then she slowly fainted, rolling from the low chair to the fur hearth-rug.
Paul picked her up like a child and carried her to the bedroom, where the maids were waiting to dress her.
“Here,” he said, “your mistress has fainted from the fatigue of the journey.”
And, with his practised medical knowledge, he himself tended her.