"Your beautiful mistress! that will serve me better!" he hissed out venomously as he flung it full upon Elaine; then fled at top speed.
"My eyes! Oh God, my eyes!" she cried, as she staggered to the ground.
Rivière sprang to her side, white with alarm. "The beast!"
"My eyes! Oh God, my eyes!" she moaned. "My eyes—my livelihood!"
CHAPTER XV
WAITING THE VERDICT
Elaine lay in Rivière's room in the Villa Clémentine. The doctor was injecting morphine, and a sister of mercy, grave-eyed under her spotless white coif like a Madonna of Francia, spoke soft words of comfort to soothe the agony of the blinded girl.
In the adjoining room Rivière waited the decision of the doctor—waited in tense, straining anxiety.
From that moment by the Druids' Tower when the vitriol had been flung upon Elaine, he had lived through a nightmare. Up on the hillside he was impotent to relieve her agony. No house around to take her to. Without a moment's delay he must get her into the hands of a doctor.
At first he had tried to lead her down the hillside, along the winding paths of the gardens, his hands around her shoulders. It was too slow. Twice the moaning girl had tripped over unseen obstacles. Then he caught her up in his arms and ran with her, the shadows of the trees and the undergrowth clutching at him like mocking shapes in a Dantesque vision of the nether world.