Helene smiled faintly, but she was destined to be waked even earlier than her husband intended, and the driving-lesson was not to take place that day. Usk went down to the river for a swim every morning, and he was still absent when Helene was aroused by hearing a horseman dash up the steep road, and ride clattering into the stone-paved courtyard beside the hotel. She heard him inquire eagerly for the English nobleman, and peeping out of her window, she saw the tokens of dismay, horror, and astonishment exhibited on the faces of the audience which gathered round him. She saw him ride down the road again to find Usk, escorted by several volunteer guides, and she rang wildly for her maid, and sent her to find out what had happened. To her dismay, the landlord returned a polite message that the rider had brought news for the noble Viscount, and for him alone, and that it was of too horrible and appalling a nature for any one else to take the responsibility of communicating it to the gracious lady. From this decision he could not be moved, and Helene, in terrible anxiety, flung on her clothes in wild haste, regardless of the protests of the discreet Hannele, who owed her position to her supposed power of keeping her young mistress within bounds. Dressed at last after a fashion, Helene rushed out, hatless and in slippers, and ran down the sunny, rocky road towards the glen. Before she had gone half the distance, she met Usk hurrying up, some way in advance of the messenger and his friends, and ran to him. She could not speak, but he read her question in her eyes.
“No, he’s not dead—at least we don’t know that he is, but they have found Paschics’s body in the river between here and Novigrad.”
“Dead—murdered?”
“I don’t know. I am going into the town to see. No, you had better not come. I’ll send out to tell you anything we may discover.”
“Oh, I must—I must come,” cried Helene, clutching feebly at his arm, and forthwith stultified herself by spinning round and falling in a dead faint at his feet. To Usk’s intense relief, there appeared at this point a sufficiently comical procession, consisting of Hannele with her Highness’s hat, Jakob with her Highness’s shoes, and William, pressed into the service, with her ladyship’s sunshade. With their assistance, Helene was carried back to the hotel and up to her room. When she recovered consciousness, her first thought was to send Usk off to Novigrad at once, and she went so far as to promise to stay in bed until he came back, although the scandalised Hannele was not a very agreeable sick-nurse, even when her company was the only alternative to Helene’s own anxious forebodings. It was a long, weary day, but Usk returned at last, though without any comfort to offer her.
“It is poor Paschics, sure enough,” he said.
“And he has been murdered?”
“That’s what we can’t be sure about. The body is terribly bruised, but there seems to be no injury sufficient to cause death.”
“But perhaps he was drowned?”
“No; the police-surgeon seemed quite certain it was not that. He rather thinks that death was due to heart-failure following on a violent shock of some kind.”