She raised her golden head with a beautiful defiance and courage.
“I love the King!” she said—“And I dare to tell you so!”
With a lightning quickness of movement the hand that had been groping after an unseen evil now came out into the light, with a sudden sharp crash, and flame of fire!
A faint cry tore the air.
“Ah—Sergius!—Sergius! Oh—God!”
And Lotys staggered back—stunned, deafened—sick, dizzy——
“Death, death!” she thought, wildly; “This is death!”
And, with a last desperate rallying of her sinking force, as every memory of her life swept over her brain in that supreme moment, she sprang at her murderer and wrenched the weapon from his hand, clutching it hard and fast in her own.
“Say—say I did it—myself—!” she gasped, in short quick sobs of pain; “Tell the King—I did it myself—myself! Sergius—save your own life!—I—forgive!”
She reeled, and with a choking cry fell back heavily—dead! Her hair came unbound with her fall, and shook itself round her in a gold wave, as though to hide the horror of the oozing blood that trickled from her lips and breast.