“I am not sleepy; I am burning with fever and I feel thirsty—oh! so thirsty.”
The grand duchess carefully measured out a few drops of champagne into a glass, added a little water, and held out the cool, refreshing beverage:
“Drink, my poor darling. The doctor did not forbid this.”
A wan smile hovered on the patient’s lips, as she eagerly quenched her raging thirst.
“The doctor!” she murmured, “why does the doctor worry me with his prescriptions? He knows I shall not get well.”
But in a severe voice now, a tinge of bitterness even in its tones, the grand duchess replied:
“I do not wish you, Elisabeth, to talk like that. You have no right not to get well.... Think of him!”
By what series of strange events came Elisabeth Dollon, for the injured woman was indeed Elisabeth Dollon, to be in this house, the house of the Grand Duchess Alexandra, to have that enigmatic personage for sick-nurse?
The pursuit of Fandor among the underwood of the Ile de Beauté, while the blazing lake was burning itself out, had ended in a startling tragedy, the discovery of Elisabeth wounded, shot by the police-officers, who had fired on her in the belief they were shooting at Fantômas. How had the mistake come about? Alas! it found its explanation in a terrible scene that had just passed between the Grand Duchess Alexandra and the unhappy girl the young journalist loved. When the first moments of stupefaction were over, and the officers of justice were hotly pursuing the fugitive, Elisabeth Dollon had confessed to the grand duchess in the stammering accents of terror, that it was really and truly the journalist Fandor she had seen and denounced under the name of Fantômas.
Then the grand duchess had hesitated no more. She had come there to undeceive Elisabeth Dollon, to convince her of Fandor’s innocence, and now she carried out her intention with a vigour and emphasis born of her sympathy with the pair, and even as she spoke, she could see the girl turn pale and almost faint in her excitement. It was true then, Fandor was innocent? Fandor was worthy of her love! Fandor was the victim of a cruel Fate!—and it was she who had set the policemen on his track, the men who at that moment were ransacking the island to seize him, dead or alive!