"Well!" said Cora, dryly, "I don't think it will be very safe for either of them to come just at present."
"Oh, well," said the doctor, cheerfully, "we have got seven long days to settle about that. And if they insist upon coming, and then catch the fever, they mustn't blame me."
And Dr. Le Guise looked as if he had perpetrated a good joke.
John Arthur's insanity was as short-lived as it was violent. He lay for the rest of the day quiet and half stupefied. When night came on, he sank into a heavy slumber.
At twelve o'clock that night, all was quiet in and about the manor.
Cora Arthur was sleeping soundly, dreamlessly, as such women do sleep. In the room adjoining hers, Céline Leroque sat, broad awake and listening intently. At last, satisfied that her mistress was sleeping, Céline arose and stole softly into the room where she lay.
Softly, softly, she approached the couch, passing through a river of moonlight that poured in at the broad windows. Then she drew from a pocket, something wrapped in a handkerchief.
Noiselessly, swiftly, she moved, and then the handkerchief, shaken free from the something within, was laid upon the face of the sleeper, while the odor of chloroform filled the room.
Nimbly her fingers moved, pulling away the coverings, and then the clothing, from the unconscious body. It is done in a moment. With a smothered exclamation of triumph, she draws away a silken belt, and removing the handkerchief, glides noiselessly from the room.
She steals on to her own room in the west wing. Here she locks the door and, striking a light, hurriedly rips the silken band with a tiny penknife, and draws from thence two papers.