“A stab with a knife or a thrust with a sword,” said the doctor. “It has gone clean through the arm and come out at the back.”
“Gad! this is news indeed! What does it mean? It's the reason for the pallour and the abstraction of some days back, for which I put the blame upon some love-affair of his. He never breathed a word of it to me, nor I suppose to you?”
“It has had no attention from me or any one else,” said the doctor; “but the wound seems to have healed of itself so far without anything being done for it.”
“So that a styptic—even the famous styptic—can do no more wonders than a good constitution after all. Poor Sim, I wonder what folly this came of. And yet—to look at him there—his face so gentle, his brow so calm, his mouth—ah, poor Sim!”
From a distant part of the house a woman's voice arose, crying, “Archie, Archi-e-e!” in a lingering crescendo: it was the Duchess, and as yet she had not heard of the day's untoward happenings. He went out and told her gently. “And now,” he went on when her agitation had abated, “what of our Chevalier?”
“Well!” said she, “what of him? I hope he is not to suffer for this, seeing MacTaggart is going to get better, for I should dearly like to have him get some return for his quest.”
“Would you, indeed?” said the Duke. “H'm,” and stared at her. “The Count is at this moment cooling his heels in the fosse cell.”
“That is hard!” said she, reddening.
“But what would you, my dear? I am still as much the representative of the law as ever, and am I to connive at such outrages under my own windows because the chief offender is something of a handsome young gentleman who has the tact to apologise for a disturbance in my domestic affairs that must, as he puts it, be disconcerting to a man at my age? A man of my age—there's France!—toujours la politesse, if you please! At my age! Confound his impudence!”
The Duchess could not suppress a smile.