She felt a sense of pain as she ascended the narrow uncarpeted stair in the close unpleasant atmosphere.
“Has he not even a valet?” she said to the old woman who left the shop to show her the way upstairs.
“No, madame,” answered the woman. “We look after the poor old gentleman as well as we can; there is only me and my sister; and one of us must attend to the business.”
Mouse shivered a little as she heard; it was a realization of indigence by which she had never been before confronted. Want of money she had known, and debt and great anxiety; but she had never been without servants, up a rickety stair, above a smelly little shop. It shocked her to see a man of this rank, of her own world, thus utterly abandoned like any beggar who had fallen by the roadside.
The frightful callousness of human nature when it is not softened by deference to wealth and self-interest struck her with its chill brutality like a handful of ice flung in her face. She was no kinder herself; still the realization of the rough and jeering egotism of the world momentarily hurt her. She thought of Buckingham dying alone in the garret. There was the solidarity of class between her and the fallen prince; and there was also the possibility that she herself might some day, in some far away old age, be no better off than he.
The woman opened a low door as she spoke, and Mouse saw into the room—a poor place with grey walls, a brick floor, spare furniture, and a narrow bed, whereon lay what was left of the once courtly and elegant person of Prince Khristof of Karstein. There was one window through which the slope of an olive-covered hill was visible.
He was conscious, though motionless and speechless; he opened his eyes at the unclosing of the door, but he did not recognize his visitor through her thick veil. His features were twisted and drawn, his hands lay supinely on the rough woollen coverlet; he looked almost already a corpse: there was only life in the steel-blue, watching, apprehensive eyes, into which at her appearance there came a gleam of wonder, perhaps of hope.
“It is very horrible!” she said, with a thrill of genuine distress.
“Are you a relation, madame?” said the woman of the house.
“Only a friend. Does the doctor come often? What does he say?”