“O sister! come out of the bath.”
“For what reason should I? Our friends come? They are early: let them wait, my Georgy. Go you and entertain them. I mean to enjoy myself this most beautiful of mornings; the water’s just right—delightful! Isn’t it, Viola? Ho! I shall have a swim round the pond: here goes?”
And then there was a fresh plashing in the water, mingled with a cheerful abandon of laughter in the voices of my sister and her maid.
I shouted at the top of my voice:
“Hear me, Virgine, dear sister! For Heaven’s sake, come out! come—”
There was a sudden cessation of the merry tones; then came a short sharp ejaculation, followed almost instantaneously by a wild scream. I perceived that neither was a reply to my appeal. I had called out in a tone of entreaty sufficient to have raised apprehension; but the voices that now reached me were uttered in accents of terror. In my sister’s voice I heard the words:
“See, Viola! O mercy—the monster! Ha! he is coming this way! O mercy! Help, George, help! Save—save me!”
Well knew I the meaning of the summons; too well could I comprehend the half-coherent words, and the continued screaming that succeeded them.
“Sister, I come, I come!”
Quick as thought, I dashed forward, breaking through the boughs that still intercepted my view.