"Maud!" he called. "Maud!"
She did not answer and he hunted about the room for something to revive her. Presently, however, she recovered consciousness unaided and uttered a faint sigh. Her lover hurried to her.
"Oh, Gurn," she murmured, laying her white hand on the wretch's neck: "it's you, dear! Come close to me, and hold me in your arms! It was too much for me! I almost broke down and told everything! I could have borne no more. Oh, what an appalling time!" She sat up sharply, her face drawn with terror. "Listen: I can hear him still!"
"Try not to think about it," Gurn whispered, caressing her.
"Did you hear him, how he kept on saying 'I am not Gurn! I am not Gurn!' Oh, heaven grant they may not find that out!"
Gurn himself was shaken by the horror of the plot he had contrived with his mistress to effect this substitution of another for himself; it surpassed in ghastliness anything that had gone before, and he had not dared to give the least hint of it to Nibet.
"The warders were well paid," he said to reassure her now. "They would deny everything." He hesitated a second, and then asked: "He drank the drug, didn't he?"
Lady Beltham nodded assent.
"It will take effect. It was acting already: so rapidly, that I thought for a moment he would fall unconscious there, at my feet!"
Gurn drew a deep breath.