She listened in unbroken silence, standing all the while, leaning one hand upon the ebony table by her.
When he had ceased to speak he buried his face in her skirts where he knelt at her feet; he did not dare to look at her. She was still silent; her breath came and went with shuddering effort. She drew her velvet gown from him with a gesture of unspeakable horror.
'You!—you!' she said, and could find no other word.
Then all grew dark around her; she threw her arms out in the void, and fell from her full height as a stone drops from a rock into the gulf below; struck dumb and senseless for the first time in all the years that she had lived.
[CHAPTER XXXIV.]
Twelve hours later she gave premature birth to a male child, dead. Once in those hours when her physical agony lulled for a moment and her consciousness returned, she said to her physician:
'Tell him to send for Egon. Egon betrays no one.'
They were the first words she had spoken. Greswold understood nothing; but he saw that some great calamity had fallen on those he loved and honoured, and that her lord never came nigh her chamber, but only pacing to and fro the corridors and passages of the house, with restless, ceaseless steps, paused ever and again to whisper—'Does she live?'
'Come to her,' said the old man once; but Sabran shuddered and turned aside.