Gray opened his haggard eyes.
"All right, thanks.... May I have a little water, if it's not too much trouble——"
Sister Eila entered the room with a carafe and some lemons; and Warner withdrew.
In the hallway below he encountered Madame de Moidrey and Peggy Brooks in earnest consultation with the village physician—an old man crippled from 1870, and wearing the Legion and an empty sleeve.
Warner shook hands with Dr. Senlis and told him what he knew of Gray's condition. Sister Eila came down presently and everybody greeted her with a warmth which unmistakably revealed her status in Saïs.
Presently she went upstairs again with Dr. Senlis. Later the Countess went up. Peggy and Philippa had gone out to the south terrace where the reverberation of the cannonade was now continually shaking the windows, and where, beyond, Ausone, a dark band of smoke stretched like a rampart across the northern sky.
As Warner stood thinking, listening to the dull shock of the concussions rolling in toward them on the wind from the north, the footman, Vilmar, approached him.
"Pardon, Monsieur Warner, but there is a frightful type hanging about whom it seems impossible to drive away——"
"What!" said Warner angrily.
"Monsieur, I have hustled him from the terrace several times; I have summoned aid from my fellow domestics; the chauffeur, Vignier, chases him with frequency into the shrubbery; Maurice and the lad, Henri, pursue him with horsewhips——"