A hollow racking cough seizes him. The blood dyes his lips as he falls back helplessly as before. In a moment Maggie is by his side with her left arm tenderly round him, and supporting him in a sitting position, as she wipes the blood from his lips with an old handkerchief.
“Have you anything, my girl, to moisten his lips with?” inquires the duke, horrified at the sight before him.
“No, sir,” she answers in a low, hopeless voice. “He had his last orange yesterday, and I have not a penny left except enough for the rent. I daren’t use that. They would turn us out if that was not paid punctual.”
Evie Ravensdale shudders; words would not paint his feelings.
“Here, Maggie,” he says, “here is some money. Run, my girl, and buy what you think he will fancy, and we will stay with him until you return. At least, colonel, I won’t ask you to. I know your time is precious. Will you swear this lad, and let him sign that deposition, and then I won’t keep you? But I want to stay myself and see him comfortable before I leave.”
With a happy smile lighting up her face Maggie Fortescue hurries from the room, and then Eric swears to and signs the deposition. The signature is tremblingly and weakly penned, still there it is, a living witness to the truth of Speranza and Gloria de Lara’s innocence.
These formalities completed, Colonel Barrett takes his departure with the precious document in his safe keeping. Its contents will ring through the world before another sun is down. No sooner has he gone, than Eric Fortescue turns his eyes once more on the duke.
“I’m glad he’s gone, sir,” he says slowly, and speaking with difficulty, “because I want to tell you one more thing very particular, sir. It will be my last words, I think, for I feel I’m sinking. It’s about Léonie, sir. I want to tell you who she is, sir. Mr. Trackem told me, sir, long ago. Her mother was Nell Stanley. Of course you know who I mean, sir—the big beauty whom your father, sir, took away from Lord Beauladown. It was she they fought that duel over. Well, Léonie is Nell Stanley’s child, and her father was the late Duke of Ravensdale. He treated her mother very bad, poor thing, and forsook her altogether after she got disfigured with the small-pox. She came to live in Verdegrease Crescent, and earned her living on the streets. But she did not live long, and died at Mr. Trackem’s house when Léonie was three years old. Mr. Trackem was beginning detective business then. Léonie was so pretty and so smart, that he kept her and trained her to the work, and that’s how I came to know her, sir. And I did love her, and it was my love which tempted me to do all the wicked things I did. But God has punished me, sir. I am dying. I shall never see Léonie any more. Still I should be happy if I knew you would care for her, sir.”
He says the last words in a whisper. He has used all the strength that he possesses to make this last statement. Poor Eric Fortescue! It is his last.
Maggie’s footstep is on the stairs; she is coming up so quickly. She has bought some grapes amongst other things with the duke’s gift.