For answer, his own hand was suddenly caught in a fierce convulsive grip, and the King rose stiffly erect. His features were grey and drawn, his lips were bloodless, his eyes glittering, as with fever. Stricken to the heart as he was, he yet forced himself to find voice and utterance.
“Speak again, Zouche! Speak those horrible, horrible words again! Make me feel them to be true! Lotys is dead!”
Zouche, with something like fear for the visible, yet strongly suppressed anguish of the man before him, sighed drearily as he repeated——
“Lotys is dead! It is God’s way—to kill all beautiful things, just as we have learned to love them! She,—Lotys,—used to talk of Justice and Order,—poor soul!—she never found either! Yet she believed in God!”
The King’s stern face never relaxed in its frozen rigidity of woe. Only his lips moved mutteringly.
“Dead! Lotys! My God!—my God! To rise to such a height of hope and good—and then—to fall so low! Lotys gone from me!—and with her goes all!”
Then a sudden delirious hurry seemed to take possession of him.
“Go now, Zouche!” he said impatiently—“Go back to the place where she lies—and tell her I am coming! I must—I will see her again! And I will see you again, Zouche!—you too!” He forced a pale smile—“Yes, poor poet! I will see you and speak with you of this—you shall write for her a dirge!—a threnody of passion and regret that shall make the whole world weep! Poor Zouche!—you have had a hard life—well may you wonder why God made us men! And Lotys is dead!”
He rang the bell on his desk violently. Sir Roger de Launay at once returned,—but started back at the sight of his Royal master’s altered countenance.
“Have the kindness, De Launay”—said the King hurriedly, not heeding his dismayed looks—“to place a carriage at the disposal of our friend Zouche! He has much business to do;—sad news to bear to all the quarters of the city—he will tell you of it,—as he has just told me! Lotys,—you know her!—Lotys, who saved my life at the risk of her own,—Lotys is dead!”