A bang, then a terrible heartrending scream.
I trembled like the leaves which were still quivering under the shower of lead.
Leaning on her smoking gun, the Grand Duchess said to me with a wan smile, "Go and see...."
Obediently I staggered up and passed the green wall. Behind it, in a pool of blood fast soaking into the ground, Melusine von Graffenfried was writhing in her death agony, her face literally blown to bits by the charge which she had received almost at point-blank range.
"What a ghastly accident!" I cried in a horror-stricken voice.
The Grand Duchess had come out of her bower.
One of Melusine's eyes was blown out, but the other was fixed on Aurora with a mad look of terror and torture.
Aurora gazed at her coldly, and murmured the words of Hamlet after he had killed Polonius:
"I took thee for thy better!"
With a horrible gasp Melusine expired.