'Gillin,' he murmured, in so strange and hoarse a voice as to make her shudder. 'It is an awful wrong we've done. Why did you let me? Too late now. I cannot set it right, but she--call my lady--why is she not here?'
The tall countess was standing sternly over him, close by, with crossed arms, but he could not see her.
'I am here. What would you?' she said; as white as he, with a growing look of dread.
'That wrong!' he gurgled. 'That dreadful thing. Oh, set it right while you have time; for my sake; for your own, that you may escape this torment. If I might live an hour--O God! but one! We three only know. If I could----'
The wretched man made an effort to rise--a last supreme effort. A spasm seized his throat. He flung his arms into the air and fell back--dead.
Doreen, the brown-eyed girl, cowered against her father and began to cry. The boys, who looked on the work of the White Pilgrim for the first time, clung trembling in an embrace with twitching lips. The two women--so dissimilar in birth and breeding--bound by a strange secret link--scrutinised each other long and steadily across the corpse, as skilful swordsmen do who would gauge a rival's skill. They were about to skirmish now. In the future might one be called upon to run the other through? Who can tell what lurks behind the veil?
The countess winced under the insolent gaze with which Madam Gillin looked her up and down. With a tinge of half-alarmed contempt she broke the silence.
'Arthur,' she said, 'take that chit away. With her mother's craven soul in her, she's like to have a fit. At any rate, save my conscience that. Fear not for me, though they have all run off as if I were plague-stricken. Mr. Curran I dare say, or some one, will see me taken care of. You will have details to look to for me. Take the girl hence. No. Leave the boys.'
Arthur Wolfe departed, taking with him Doreen and his godson Tone; and Mr. Curran, nodding to them, withdrew to the antechamber.
The women were alone with their dead. My lady stood frowning at the usurper, who, no whit abashed, laid a hand upon the corpse and said, in solemn accents: 'So help me God--I'll do his bidding. Do not glare at me, woman, or you may drive me to use my nails. I know your secret, for your husband babbled of it as he slept. It is a fearful wrong. Many a time I've urged him to see justice done, no matter at what cost to you and to himself. But he was weak and wicked too. I suppose it is now too late, for you are as bad as he, and vain as well of your murky half-caste blood!'