“Is it fatal?” asked Fareham, standing motionless as stone, while the other men knelt on either side of De Malfort.
“I’ll run for a surgeon,” said Masaroon. “There’s a fellow I know of this side the Abbey—mends bloody noses and paints black eyes,” and he was off, running across the grass to the nearest gate.
“It looks plaguily like a coffin,” Dangerfield answered, with his hand on the wounded man’s breast. “There’s throbbing here yet; but he may bleed to death, like poor Lindsey, before surgery can help him. You had better run, Fareham. Take horse to Dover, and get across to Calais or Ostend. You were devilish provoking. It might go hard with you if he was to die.”
“I shall not budge, Dangerfield. Didn’t you hear me say I wanted to kill him? You might guess I didn’t care a cast of the dice for my life when I said as much. Let them find it murder, and hang me. I wanted him out of the world, and don’t care how soon I follow.”
“You are mad—stark, staring mad!”
The wounded man raised himself on his elbow, groaning aloud in the agony of movement, and beckoned Fareham, who knelt down beside him, all of a piece, like a stone figure.
“Fareham, you had better run; I have powerful friends. There’ll be an ugly stir if I die of this bout. Kiss me, mon ami. I forgive you. I know what wound rankled; ’twas for your wife’s sister you fought—not the cards.”
He sank into Dangerfield’s arms, swooning from loss of blood, as Masaroon came back at a run, bringing a surgeon, an elderly man of that Alsatian class which is to be found out of bed in the small hours. He brought styptics and bandages, and at once set about staunching the wound.
While this was happening a curtain had been suddenly pulled aside at an upper window in Lady Castlemaine’s lodgings, showing a light within. The window was thrown open, and a figure appeared, clad in a white satin night-gown that glistened in the moonlight, with a deep collar of ermine, from which the handsomest face in London looked across the garden, to the spot where Fareham, the seconds, and the surgeon were grouped about De Malfort.
It was Lady Castlemaine. She leant out of the window and called to them.