"I must get Stewart back to Paris at once," he said finally. "I must get him under care, and in a safe place from which he can't escape. It will want some managing. If I can get away, I'll come out here again in the morning; but if not, I'll send the car out with orders to wait here until Ste. Marie is ready to return to the city. Are you sure he's all right—that he isn't badly hurt?"
"I think he will be all right," she said, "save for the pain. He was only stunned." And Hartley nodded.
"He seems to be breathing quite naturally," said he. "That's arranged then. The car will be here in waiting, and I shall come with it if I can. Tell him when he wakes." He put out his hand to her, and the girl gave him hers very listlessly but smiling. She wished he would go, and leave her alone.
Then in a moment more he did go, and she heard his quick steps down through the trees, and heard, a little later, the engine of the motor car start up with a sudden loud volley of explosions. And so she was left to her solitary watch. She noticed as she turned to go indoors that the blackness of the night was just beginning to grey towards dawn.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE SCALES OF INJUSTICE
Ste. Marie slept soundly until mid-morning—that is to say, about ten o'clock—and then awoke with a dull pain in his head and a sensation of extreme giddiness, which became something like vertigo when he attempted to rise. However, with the aid of the old Michel he got somehow upstairs to his room, and made a rather sketchy toilet.
Coira came to him there and, while he lay still across the bed, told him about the happenings of the night after he had received his injury. She told him also that the motor was waiting for him, outside the wall, and that Richard Hartley had sent a message by the chauffeur, to say that he was very busy in Paris making arrangements about Stewart, who had come out of his strange state of half insensibility only to rave in a delirium.
"So," she said, "you can go now whenever you are ready. Arthur is with his family, Captain Stewart is under guard, and your work is done. You ought to be glad—even though you are suffering pain."
Ste. Marie looked up at her.