“Yes, everything—so heavy a dose of chloral paralyzes the heart quickly—and when the doctor there called me it was already all over.”
Tatiana swayed a little. “Chloral!” she said, dully. “Chloral—left near him! And I never thought of that, miserable fool that I am!”
“Who could have thought of it, Madame la Duchesse, cheerful as he was?”
“We should have thought!” She stooped over Preston and hopelessly put her ear to his heart, her fingers on his pulse. A rustle of paper made her straighten herself abruptly, and then she sat down all of a piece on the edge of the bed close to him and tore open the envelope addressed to her.
Her fingers were shaking so, her eyes were so hazy, that at first she could not see, and with the gesture of a sorrowing child she passed the back of her hand across her face. “I must! I must!” she murmured, and slowly she unfolded the little leaves.
“Another burden yet will I impose upon you,” she read, “that of keeping me near you in consecrated ground—for you will see to that, will you not? since from you I have learned so much.”
She paused; two large tears glided down her cheeks; then she went on bravely to the end. “I leave all I have to leave to the Abbé de Kerdren for the poor; all excepting a sum sufficient to make him whom you called my carabin independent for life. He has, I understand, a mother to support. You will approve, I know. Also you will think gently of me and pray for me—I do not doubt that. God bless and reward you.”
The three men in the room, with heads lowered, hardly dared to breathe.
“Olivier,” the Duchess said at last, very low, “go and fetch the Duke.” And she knelt down beside Preston.