Puzzled, and with a touch of fear, she went slowly across the room towards his chair. He had strayed out on to the terrace perhaps—he had gone out for a final smoke. She would steal after him in her long white gown, and frighten him if she could.
“He ought at least to take me for a ghost,” she thought.
She stopped transfixed with a sudden horror. He was lying on the carpet at her feet in a huddled heap, just as he had rolled out of his chair. His head was bent forward between his shoulders, his face was hidden. She tried to lift his head, hanging over him, calling to him in passionate entreaty; and, behold, her hands and arms were drowned in blood. His blood splashed her white peignoir. It was all over her. She seemed to be steeped in it, as she sat on the floor trying to get a look at his face—to see if his wound was mortal.
For some moments she had no other thought than to sit there in her horror, repeating his name in every accent of terror and of love, beseeching him to answer her. Then gradually came the conviction of his unconsciousness, and of the need of help. He was badly hurt—dangerously hurt—but it might not be mortal. Help must be got. He must be cured somehow. She could not believe that he was to die.
She rushed to the bell and rang again, and again, and again, hardly taking her finger from the little ivory knob, listening as the shrill electric peal vibrated through the silent house. It seemed an age before there was any response, and then three servants came hurrying in—the butler, and one of the footmen, and a scared housemaid. They saw her standing there, tall and white, dabbled with blood.
“Some one has been trying to murder him,” she cried. “Didn’t you hear a gun?”
No, no one had heard anything till they heard the bell. The two men lifted Sir Godfrey from the floor to the sofa, and did all they could do to staunch that deadly wound in his neck, from which the blood was still pouring—a bullet wound. Lambert, the butler, was afraid that the bullet had pierced the jugular vein.
If there was life still, it was only ebbing life. Juanita flung herself on the ground beside that prostrate form and kissed the unconscious lips, and the cold brow, and those pallid cheeks; kissed and cried over him, and repeated again and again that the wound was not mortal.
“Is any one going for the doctor?” she cried, frantically. “Are you all going to stand still and see him die?”
Lambert assured her that Thomas was gone to the stable to wake the men, and despatch a mounted messenger for Mr. Dolby, the family doctor.